Design and Hardware Implementation of a Reconfigurable Mostly Digital IR-UWB Radio

Aubin Lecointre (1) , Daniela Dragomirescu (1) , Robert Plana (2)

1 LAAS-MINC - Équipe MIcro et Nanosystèmes pour les Communications sans fil
2 LAAS - Laboratoire d'analyse et d'architecture des systèmes

This paper addresses the problem of radio interface in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). We study the specific constraints of WSN and we expose how, by using a reconfigurable mostly digital IR-UWB radio, we can solve this problem. WSN context implies constraints such as low power, low cost, small size and simplicity on the radio layer. We present the reconfigurability as a solution to the large diversity of WSN applications. Dynamic reconfigurability is implemented over an IR-UWB radio interface. A two level development is exposed, based on system architecture modelling and hardware implementation. This design flow permits to obtain a reconfigurable IR-UWB transceiver on an ASIC/FPGA implementation. The proposed solution allows data rate, spectrum, and radio range reconfigurability.

Mots clés: IR-UWB; mostly digital radio; reconfigurability; FPGA; ASIC; WSN; system architecture modelling; hardware and system co-design

Domaines: Réseaux et télécommunications [cs.NI]

Aubin Lecointre, Daniela Dragomirescu, Robert Plana. Design and Hardware Implementation of a Reconfigurable Mostly Digital IR-UWB Radio. Romanian Journal of Information Science and Technology, 2008, 11 (4), pp. 295-318. ⟨hal-00420320⟩