Higher order modulation IR-UWB signals for short-range communications

High data-rate applications can be foreseen for future ultra-wideband systems in the areas of internet access, multimedia services, wireless interfaces and location-aware services. Since it is particularly important to design low cost and low power devices, a growing attention will be devoted to the UWB systems with high spectral efficiency. In this paper, higher order modulation schemes are derived for Impulse Radio (IR) systems. The original signalling schemes provide a higher spectral efficiency and permit higher data-rate applications: though the IR systems are based on the use of baseband signals, the introduction of a proper orthogonal basis permits to derive higher order constellations as a linear combination of the elements of the basis with no additional bandwidth. Therefore, the increase of the spectral efficiency also permits to have a higher system throughput.