Cornell PCO Based Impulse Radio Demonstration

Four IR-UWB radio nodes using Pulse Coupled Oscillator synchronization.

In the traditional (and
overwhelmingly dominant) design of radio systems, a receiver and
transmitter are synchronized by carefully choosing oscillators based
on an external quartz crystal whose nominal frequencies are matched
within 50 parts per million or less and by communicating over short
enough periods of time such that those oscillators' phase do not run
against each other excessively. However, using the quartz crystal
component significantly raises the cost of the system, and ideally we
would like to fabricate radio chips that don't need it. This is
impossible if we do synchronization the traditional way though since
on-chip oscillators' natural frequencies vary in up to 20-30% and
rarely are better than 2-3% (well off from 50ppm!). Using the PCO
synchronization and pulse based transmissions, this frequency matching
requirement is greatly reduced, and we can turn the radio off between
expected arrival times of the data and save a lot of power since the
receiver and transmitter are some of the most power hungry parts in
any radio circuit.

The video is significant because we do radio communications in a
drastically different way from the norm, and this demonstration shows
that the concept can work in a meaningful way, and be used to transmit
something of fairly high complexity, like an image and is robust
enough to make it through 4 different radios before it reaches its
destination.