  In an ultra wideband (UWB) impulse radio (IR) system, a number of pulses,
each transmitted in an interval called a "frame", is employed to represent one
information symbol. Conventionally, a single type of UWB pulse is used in all
frames of all users. In this paper, IR systems with multiple types of UWB
pulses are considered, where different types of pulses can be used in different
frames by different users. Both stored-reference (SR) and transmitted-reference
(TR) systems are considered. First, the spectral properties of a multi-pulse IR
system with polarity randomization is investigated. It is shown that the
average power spectral density is the average of the spectral contents of
different pulse shapes. Then, approximate closed-form expressions for the bit
error probability of a multi-pulse SR-IR system are derived for RAKE receivers
in asynchronous multiuser environments. The effects of both inter-frame
interference (IFI) and multiple-access interference (MAI) are analyzed. The
theoretical and simulation results indicate that SR-IR systems that are more
robust against IFI and MAI than a "conventional" SR-IR system can be designed
with multiple types of ultra-wideband pulses. Finally, extensions to
multi-pulse TR-IR systems are briefly described.
