  Transmitted reference pulse cluster (TRPC) signaling was recently proposed
and developed for noncoherent ultra-wideband (UWB) communications. In this
paper, a practical passband TRPC-UWB system is designed and analyzed to deal
with the carrier frequency offset, phase offset and phase noise inherent in
voltage-controlled oscillators (VCO) of the transmitter and the receiver. Based
on a general model of noisy VCO and employing some reasonable assumptions, an
equivalent linear time-invariant (LTI) analytical model is obtained to
facilitate the bit error rate (BER) analysis. Our analysis shows that the
constant carrier frequency offset and the phase offset can be removed by
employing the passband transmitter and the noncoherent receiver. Furthermore, a
semi-analytical BER expression is derived to show the impact of phase noise on
the system error performance. Simulation results validate the semi-analytical
expressions and both of them indicate that TRPC is more robust to the effect of
phase noise than conventional transmitted reference (TR) and coherent UWB Rake
receivers.
