Ultrawideband Channel Sounding Studies in Outdoor and Outdoor-Indoor Environments

Abstract

Ultrawideband (UWB) is one of the most promising communication technologies in recent times with the promise of high data rates and spectral reuse.

This work analyses the outdoor and outdoor-to-indoor propagating characteristics of the UWB pulse, which can be of the order of a few gigahertz in bandwidth. The aim of the thesis is to provide the parameters needed in order to develop a channel model for such cases. The channel model would then play an important role in determining physical layer (PHY) solutions to optimally exploit these characteristics.

The measurements carried out on the Virginia Tech campus are used to compute parameters such as path loss, penetration loss and delay statistics. These are carried out in multiple frequency bands and the results are compared across frequency bands to determine effect of different frequency levels on the parameters.

Finally the results are analyzed with respect to similar parameters obtained in other measurement campaigns in an attempt to evaluate the performance of Ultrawideband vis-à-vis narrowband systems.