The large delay spread of ultra-wideband (UWB) channels causes intersymbol interference and therefore increases the complexity of a UWB Rake receiver. To resolve these problems, we present a new method for the design of channel shortening equalizers (CSE) in time-hopping UWB systems. Our proposed system is based on an eigenfilter method using a new objective function. In contrast to existing methods based essentially on the optimization of the CSE following one single criterion, our design allows using complementary criteria. The proposed system aims at minimizing most of the energy of the shortened channel impulse response outside the desired delay-spread window and the spectral distortion related to the filtering function. Furthermore, it simultaneously aims at reducing the multiple access interference and noise power. Indeed, the proposed CSE reduces the number of effective channel taps before the correlation receiver, which renders its architecture less complex