NOFDM - Noncoherent Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing

The aim of this project is the demonstration, validation, and evaluation of a wireless multicarrier transmission scheme that employs a novel noncoherent receiver. The receiver supports energy detection of a multiband ultra-wideband (UWB) signal. It is a robust, power-efficient receiver architecture that is capable of collecting energy from the multipath components of the channel response and it has a scalable increased data rate. The design and evaluation of a hardware demonstrator for this receiver architecture is the key objective of the project. Central element of the demonstrator is an analog frontend that lowers the requirement for digital signal processing and for power hungry analog-to-digital conversion. The proposed receiver may be used in wireless systems that perform data transmissions at extremely large data rates (smaler= 500 MBit/s) over limited distances (greater= 5 m). It could be used to connect mass storage as available in todays mobile handsets to personnel computers, home entertainment systems, or some public/commercial information kiosk, for instance. The discussed receiver has a radically different system architecture. Therefore, it may be capable of providing these ultra-high data rates at a significantly reduced energy per transmitted bit, compared with conventional systems. Key aim of this project is demonstrating the feasibility of such a receiver and evaluating the possible power saving.