Ultra Wide Band

BINTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON CONVERGENT TECHNOLOGIES (IWCT) 2005

1

Ultra Wideband: Applications, Technology and Future perspectives
Ben Allen1, Tony Brown2, Katja Schwieger3, Ernesto Zimmermann3, Wasim Malik4, David Edwards4, Laurent Ouvry5, Ian Oppermann6
1

King’s College London, UK, 2University of Manchester, UK, 3University of Dresden, Germany 4 University of Oxford, UK, 5LETI,France, 6University of Oulu, Finland
more control of the occupied radio spectrum. Modern UWB research stems from the 1960’s when the U.S. military considered using pulse transmissions (impulse radio) for covert imaging, radar and ‘stealth’ communications. In the 1990’s key technologies and concepts were brought into the public domain and, simultaneously, sub-system and component technology hadprogressed enabling UWB systems to become commercially viable. Furthermore, the technology ‘boom’ of the 1990’s opened up new market potential and applications for UWB in the home. The remainder of this paper elaborates on the above discussion and is structured as follows. Section II describes perceived applications of UWB technology for communications. Section III then focuses on technological aspects ofUWB. Medium Access Control (MAC) for UWB is discussed in section IV. Section V describes spectrum issues that relate to the transmission of UWB signals. Some future perceptions of UWB technology are presented in section VI, and the paper is finally summarised in section VII. II. APPLICATIONS A. Low Data Rate (LDR) Applications The use of very short pulses in impulse radio transmission, andcareful signal and architecture design, facilitate the design of very simple transmitters, permitting extreme low energy consumption and thus long-life battery-operated devices, which are mainly used in low data rate networks with low duty cycles. Nevertheless, the receiver design remains the major challenge. Energy detection receivers are a promising approach to build simple receivers [3]. Energymanagement schemes may alleviate the strict energy bounds imposed by batteries [4]. Surveillance of areas difficult to access by humans can be achieved by the deployment of sensor networks [5]. The inherent noise-like behaviour of UWB systems makes robust security systems highly feasible. They are not only difficult to detect, but also excel in jamming resistance. These characteristics are essential,not only for traditional security alarm systems, but also for Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs), which are envisaged for medical supervision. Due to the simple transceiver architecture and the thereby expected low costs of transceivers, the number of devices to be employed can be over dimensioned. With this approach, a

Abstract— Ultra Wide Band (UWB) wireless communications offers a radicallydifferent approach to wireless communication compared to conventional narrow band systems. Global interest in the technology is huge. This paper reports on the state of the art of UWB wireless technology and highlights key application areas, technological challenges, higher layer protocol issues, spectrum operating zones and future drivers. The majority of the discussion focuses on the state ofthe art of UWB technology as it is today and in the near future. Index Terms—Ultra Wideband, wireless technology

ltra Wide Band (UWB) wireless communications offers a radically different approach to wireless communications compared to conventional narrow band systems. Global interest in the technology is huge. Some estimates predict the UWB market will be larger than the existing wireless LAN andBluetooth markets combined by the year 2007 [1]. This is due to the capability of these license exempt wide bandwidth wireless systems to yield low cost, low energy, short range, extremely high capacity wireless communications links. The actual achievable data rate naturally depends on the particular technology and propagation conditions. The use of UWB has already been deregulated in the...