  In this paper, we develop a statistical characterization of the multipath
interference in an Impulse Radio (IR)-UWB system, considering the standardized
IEEE 802.15.4a channel model. In such systems, the chip length has to be
carefully tuned as all the propagation paths located beyond this limit can
cause interframe/intersymbol interferences (IFI/ISI). Our approach aims at
computing the probability density function (PDF) of the power of all multipath
components with delays larger than the chip time, so as to prevent such
interferences. Exact analytical expressions are derived first for the
probability that the chip length falls into a particular cluster of the
multipath propagation model and for the statistics of the number of paths
spread over several contiguous clusters. A power delay profile (PDP)
approximation is then used to evaluate the total interference power as the
problem appears to be mathematically intractable. Using the proposed
closed-form expressions, and assuming minimal prior information on the channel
state, a rapid update of the chip time value is enabled so as to control the
signal to interference plus noise ratio.
