Ultra-wideband Technology Enabling Low-power, High-rate Connectivity (invited Paper)

Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology has gone through some revolutionary changes this year, including the legalization of the technology in the US for imaging systems, vehicular radar systems, and communications and measurement systems. The allocation of 7.5 GHz worth of new, unlicensed spectrum that can be used for communications and measurement techniques, in particular, has sparked a renewed interest in both research and development of UWB technology in industry, universities, and government offices. However, a significant number of challenges remain for the technology to become ubiquitous. In this paper, a brief status of the UWB industry will be presented, including international regulatory and standards efforts that are currently underway. Then, some recent results on UWB channel modeling efforts for the indoor multipath channel are presented, which are critical when designing a high-rate UWB implementation. Finally, some specific challenges for UWB physical layer designs will also be presented, which could influence the long-term viability of the technology.