In this Letter, we propose a framework for analyzing the performance of Ultra Wide Band (UWB) receiver architec- tures in sparse multipath channels with overlapped multipath components (MPCs). The proposed methodology is based on approximating the Moment Generating Function (MGF) of the received Signal–to–Noise Ratio (SNR) via Pade ́ expansion. The method can be applied to any fading scenarios and to any UWB receiver architectures, provided that the MGF of the SNR can be characterized in terms of a convergent Pade ́ expansion. By comparing the results obtained from the analysis with those obtained from simulations in selected reference scenarios, it can be observed that the proposed approximation is very accurate.