UWB Explained and a New Potential Revealed

[Russ Smith]

When Ultra Wide Band (UWB) data transmission was first envisioned, it looked even less like other radio transmissions than it does now. Radio, since it's invention, has used a carrier with the data or voice modifying either it's intensity (AM) or frequency (FM). Modems used the same techniques to transmit data over phone lines. The original UWB design was the first data transmission technique without a carrier. Instead, UWB sent shaped pulses out at any frequency within its vast spectrum. That changed when the IEEE IEEE 802.15.3a committee set the standards for UWB. The new version of UWB has a set of 132 individual carriers at 4 MHz intervals in tight bands 528MHz wide. The UWB allowable spectrum covers 13 bands from 3.4 to 10GHz.

To get that kind of spectrum coverage, it's likely that equipment manufacturers flexible hardware with software to select the configuration of frequencies. That brings up an interesting possiblity: Such flexible hardware could also be programmed to emulate more commonplace radio schemes such as 802.11 a, b, and g WiFi. Further, when future standards emerge, the flexibility of the circuitry will likely be able to meet them.