Patent ID: 7796686

Claim:
A method of non-coherent ultrawideband communication, the method comprising the steps of: receiving, by a receiver, a received signal comprising an ultrawideband signal and noise, the ultrawideband signal comprising a plurality of transmitted symbols and, having a predetermined pulse-to-pulse duration, the transmitted symbols received at a plurality of parallel correlators; correlating the ultrawideband signal with a delayed version of the ultrawideband signal using the plurality of parallel correlators to produce a correlated signal; integrating the correlated signal utilizing a plurality of parallel integrators to establish a plurality of integrator outputs, each of the plurality of parallel integrators having a predetermined adaptable integration interval; sampling the integrator outputs and averaging the sampled outputs to provide a plurality of power estimates of the ultrawideband signal; estimating a maximum excess delay of the ultrawideband channel from the power estimates of the ultrawideband signal; integrating the received signal utilizing an integration time interval that integrates a signal power from the maximum excess delay of the ultrawideband channel to the beginning of a next pulse to allow integration of a noise power of the channel only, responsive to the maximum excess delay of the ultrawideband channel always being less than the pulse-to-pulse duration of the ultrawideband signal; repeating the integration step over the plurality of transmitted symbols and over a plurality of pulses; averaging the results of the integration steps to provide an estimate of the noise power of the ultrawideband channel; combining the sampled integrator outputs based upon the estimated maximum excess delay of the ultrawideband channel and the estimated noise power of the ultrawideband channel to identify the plurality of transmitted symbols.