Ultra-Wideband Radio

EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing, Mar 2005

The application of ultra-wideband (UWB) technology to low-cost short-range communications presents unique challenges to the communications engineer. The impact of the US FCC's regulations and the characteristics of the low-power UWB propagation channels are explored, and their effects on UWB hardware design are illustrated. This tutorial introduction includes references to more detailed explorations of the subject.

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Ultra-Wideband Radio

EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing Ultra-Wideband Radio Robert A. Scholtz 0 1 David M. Pozar 0 1 0 Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California , Los Angeles, CA 90089 , USA 1 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Massachusetts , Amherst, MA 01003 , USA The application of ultra-wideband (UWB) technology to low-cost short-range communications presents unique challenges to the communications engineer. The impact of the US FCC's regulations and the characteristics of the low-power UWB propagation channels are explored, and their effects on UWB hardware design are illustrated. This tutorial introduction includes references to more detailed explorations of the subject. and phrases; UWB radio; UWB propagation; UWB antennas; UWB radio architectures; selective RAKE receivers; transmitted-reference receivers ORIGINS It has been said that paradigm shifts in design and operation of systems are necessary to achieve orders-of-magnitude changes in performance. It would seem that such events have occurred in the world of radio communications with the advent of ultra-wideband (UWB) radio. Indeed, several remarkable innovations have taken place in the brief history of UWB radio. Initially transient analysis and timedomain measurements in microwave networks (1960s) and the patenting of short-pulse (often called impulse or carrierless or baseband or UWB) radio systems in the early 1970s were major departures from the then-current engineering practices. (For detailed descriptions of the early work in this field, see [ 1 ].) Marconi’s view of using modulated sinusoidal carriers and high-Q filters for channelization has so dominated design and regulation of RF systems since the early twentieth century, that the viability of short-pulse systems often has been greeted with skepticism. Bennett and Ross described the state of UWB engineering efforts near the end of the 1970s in a revealing paper. “BA[seband]R[adars] have been . . . recently demonstrated for various applications, including auto precollision sensing, spaceship docking, airport surface traffic control, tanker ship docking, harbor collision avoidance, etc. These sensing applications cover ranges from 5 to 5000 ft . . . . Further applications resulted in the construction of a sub-nanosecond, single coaxial cable scheme for multiplexing data between computer terminals . . . . More recently baseband pulse techniques have been applied to the problem of developing a short-range wireless communication link. Here, the low EM pollution and covertness of operation potentially provide the means for wireless transmission without licensing.” (From the Abstract of C. L. Bennett and G. F. Ross, Timedomain electromagnetics and its applications, Proc. IEEE, March 1978.) The early applications of UWB technology were primarily radar related, driven by the promise of fine-range resolution that comes with large bandwidth. In the early 1990s, conferences on UWB technology were initiated and proceedings documented in book form [ 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ]. For the most part, the papers at these conferences are motivated by radar applications. Class/application Communications and measurement systems Imaging: ground penetrating radar, wall, medical imaging Imaging: through wall Imaging: surveillance Vehicular 3.1 to 10.6 GHz (different out-of-band emission limits for indoor and outdoor devices) < 960 MHz or 3.1 to 10.6 GHz < 960 MHz or 1.99 to 10.6 GHz 1.99 to 10.6 GHz 24 to 29 GHz User limitations No Yes Yes Yes No Beginning in the late 1980s, small companies, for example, Multispectral Solutions, Inc. (http://www.multispectral. com/history.html), Pulson Communications (later to become Time Domain Corporation), and Aether Wire and Location (http://www.aetherwire.com), specializing in UWB technology, started basic research and development on communications and positioning systems. By the mid-1990s, when the UltRa Lab at the University of Southern California was formed (http://ultra.usc.edu/New Site/), lobbying the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to allow UWB technology to be commercialized was beginning. At a US Army Research Office/UltRa Lab-Sponsored Workshop in May 1998, an FCC representative indicated that a notice of inquiry (NOI) into UWB was imminent, and the companies working on UWB technology decided to band together in an informal industry association now known as the UltraWideband Working Group (http://www.uwb.org). The objective of this association was to convince the FCC to render a ruling favorable to the commercialization of UWB radio systems. The FCC issued the NOI in September 1998 and within a year the Time Domain Corporation, US Radar, and Zircon Corporation had received waivers from the FCC to allow limited deployment of a small number of UWB devices to support continued development of the technology, and USC’s UltRa Lab had an experimental license to study UWB radio transmissions. A not (...truncated)


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Robert A. Scholtz, Davida M. Pozar. Ultra-Wideband Radio, EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing, 2005, pp. 758540, Volume 2005, Issue 3, DOI: 10.1155/ASP.2005.252