Hardware Building Blocks for Wireless Multimedia Networking by Ultra-Wideband OFDM Transceivers

The paper deals with the design of UWB OFDM transceivers, an emerging technology enabling wireless multimedia networking in home and SOHO(Small Office Home Office) scenarios. After a review of the UWB OFDM architecture and a comparison to other wireless networking techniques (Bluetooth, IrDA, WLAN, WiMAX) a system level analysis is addressed to find the bit width size which ensures the best trade-off between system performance and complexity of the mixed-signal circuitry (ADC and base-band digital chain). Then, innovative solutions recently proposed by University of Pisa for UWB systems such as fast ADC and OFDM FFT/IFFT modem are detailed. INTRODUCTION ON UWB OFDM TECHNOLOGY The emerging ultra-wideband (UWB) radio technology, developed by the IEEE 802.15.3a study group as a carrier-based system incorporating frequency hopping and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), standardized by ECMA in [10], promises to eliminate just about all of a home's signal cables [1,10]