Multivariate generalized Gaussian density (MGGD) is used to approximate the multiple access interference (MAI) and additive white Gaussian noise in pulse-based ultrawide bandwidth (UWB) system. The MGGD probability density function (pdf) is shown to be a better approximation of a UWB system as compared to multivariate Gaussian, multivariate Laplacian and multivariate Gaussian-Laplacian mixture (GLM). The similarity between the simulated and the approximated pdf is measured with the help of modified Kullback-Leibler distance (KLD). It is also shown that MGGD has the smallest KLD as compared to Gaussian, Laplacian and GLM densities. A receiver based on the principles of minimum bit error rate is designed for the MGGD pdf. As the requirement is stringent, the adaptive implementation of the receiver is also carried out in this paper. Training sequence of the desired user is the only requirement when implementing the detector adaptively. © 2002-2012 IEEE.