LAUSR

Ultrawideband (UWB) signals are extremely power limited due to the severe power spectral density constraints obligated by the Federal Communications Committee. Therefore, the design of radiation efficient antennas for UWB signaling is a challenging step in the design and development of impulse radio UWB (IR-UWB) communication systems, especially when these signals coexist with previously standardized narrowband (NB) wireless services. In this paper, a dual-band-notched quad-element UWB multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna design is presented. The proposed design is capable of suppressing NB interference (NBI). The NBI suppression capability of the proposed design is tested both experimentally and through simulations. Moreover, the experimentally measured spectral characteristics of the proposed design are employed in simulating the bit error rate (BER) performance of IR-UWB systems, considering the biphase modulation (BPM) scheme. Both experimental and simulation results show that the proposed design is capable of improving the BER performance of BPM-modulated IR-UWB systems in an NBI environment by suppressing the NBI signals located at six different frequencies within the bandwidth of the two band notches of the proposed design, while introducing a negligible distortion to the IR-UWB signaling waveforms.