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The IEEE 802.15.4a standard for wireless sensor networks is designed for highly accurate ranging with impulse radio Ultra Wideband (UWB) signals. The standard allows a large number of different system parameters for the preamble, which are analyzed in detail for energy detectors. Energy detectors have low complexity and promise low cost and low energy consumption. The focus of this work is on statistical modeling of inter-pulse interference (IPI), noise terms and correlation properties of two despreading methods. One method shows perfect crosscorrelation properties and the other one shows a zero-mean noise floor. An IPI intensive LOS industrial environment was chosen to verify the theoretical results and to evaluate both despreading methods for different system settings. It is shown that the first method performs better if IPI is the limiting factor and the other one is suitable if noise is dominant.

In this contribution we present a modular IEEE 802.15.4a UWB demonstrator platform. The demonstrator supports a one-way communication link and allows for ranging and communication experiments.