Coded-reference ultra-wideband (CR UWB) systems provide orthogonalization of the reference and data signals in the code domain to facilitate communications without the need for complex channel estimation and have significant advantages over the previous techniques in terms of performance and/or implementation complexity. This thesis presents a UWB testbed as a general experimental platform to explore pulse-based UWB communications and discusses design and implementation issues. A testbed is built as a flexible solution for hardware implementation of a CR UWB system.