Cyclic prefixed single carrier transmission in intra-vehicle wireless sensor networked control systems

Intra-vehicle wireless sensor network, which is also called networked control system (NCS) is a promising new research area. NCS can not only provide part cost, assembly, maintenance savings, and fuel efficiency through the elimination of the wires, but also enable new sensor technologies to be integrated into vehicles. Ultra wideband (UWB) communication is a competitive candidate for the intra-vehicle NCS. In this paper, the performance of cyclic prefixed single carrier with frequency domain equalization (SC-FDE) transmission is investigated over intra-vehicle NCS propagation environment. The error-rate performance and the implementation complexity are compared among impulse based single carrier UWB (SC-UWB), multicarrier UWB (MC-UWB) employing orthogonal frequency-division-multiplexing (OFDM), and CP-SC under the same transmitting data rate conditions. Simulation results demonstrate conclusive performance advantage of the SC-FDE scheme on the communication of two different intra-vehicle NCS scenarios, especially when minimum mean square error method is taken into account.