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Ultra-wide band (UWB) is gaining popularity as a physical layer technique for low power and high data rate wireless applications. Currently most wireless body area network (WBAN) platforms are based on narrowband wireless technology such as ZigBee and Bluetooth. This paper presents hardware implementation of impulse radio ultra-wide band (IR-UWB) based sensor nodes. Two major approaches for the development of an IR-UWB sensor node are discussed herein. A UWB receiver implementation using off-the-shelf components is also described. This communication system is used to evaluate the performance of the UWB sensor nodes in terms of bit error rate (BER). A technique for dynamically varying the pulse repetitive frequency (PRF) of the UWB pulses is also discussed in this paper as a further improvement for the suggested sensor designs.