ABSTRACT

Mankind has come across many stages right from ancient Stone Age to the modern
wireless age. In every stage it developed its own unique method of communication to suit
its requirements. These methods range from Graham Bell’s cabled telephones to today’s
wireless mobile handsets. But if there could be a technology such that the waves could
surpass any obstacles like hard walls or the hard earth etc… isn’t it wonderful like a
dream?

It isn’t a dream anymore!!! The new technology called ULTRA WIDE BAND has
brought all our dreams come true with many features to add.

It has

• A band width extending 25%of the center frequency

• Speeds of 1Giga bits per second
• See through capability
• Less power requirement
• Superior performance over all the existing technologies.

And many more…

This paper discusses what this technology is and how it is capable of all these features.
Further it discusses wide range of applications in communication field and how it is yet
to revolutionize the Mobile Communications.

INTRODUCTION

Mobile communications field has tremendously revolutionized in the past few decades.
Day- by- day many new features are getting added. Today one is able to view running
images on the small screen of the mobile handset. Such features demand for very high
speeds showing way to the emergence of new and capable technologies. Ultra wide band
has been described as one of the most promising technologies of our times. Early Ultra
wide band systems were developed mainly as a military surveillance tool because they
could see through trees and beneath ground surfaces. UWB is true digital radio
communication, a series of very short electrical pulses (billionths of a second) that exist
not on any particular frequency, but on ALL frequencies simultaneously. It is just a blast
of electrical noise. In order to hear the information in that code, a UWB receiver has to
know exactly WHEN to listen in order to hear. This makes UWB very secure. UWB is
pretty much immune to eavesdropping, interference or jamming.
UWB requires ultra low power, often one ten thousandth as much as a cell phone, and
because of that low power it is undetectable by conventional radios, looking to them just
like very quiet noise. Besides UWB has important friends companies like Intel, IBM,
Motorola and Texas Instruments that are committed to making UWB chipsets or have
invested in uwb startups. A UWB phone uses so little power it can remain on for weeks
without recharging and UWB will ultimately be cheaper to make than conventional
radios since it is built entirely of commercial grade computer chips and requires no
tuning. These are some of the unique characteristics posed by this new technology.
Because of this it is completely irresistible to put this technology to use.

Prevalent Technologies:

WiFi, WiMax, 802.20, woznet etc are the prevalent technologies leading the wireless
field today. Let us look at this table comparing these technologies in speed, coverage,
their advantages and disadvantages.

Main Disadvantage:
The main disadvantage of the above mentioned technologies is that of
security.
The new technology that is coming as a solution to the disadvantages of all these
prevalent technologies is the base band, Zero carrier ULTRA WIDE BAND technology
that can drive data at the rates of 1Giga bits per second. UWB emits background noise as
harmless as the static produced by laptop PCs. It operates at one-millionth of the power
of a cell phone and many more…

ULTRA WIDE BAND- A new technology with thousands of potential applications

UWB is an impulse, base band or zero carrier technology transmitting very short duration
pulses often of duration of nanoseconds or even less. UWB systems transmit signals
across a much wider frequency than conventional systems and are usually very difficult
to detect.
The bandwidth of UWB signal is at least 25% of center frequency. The minimum
bandwidth of a UWB signal centered at 4GHz would be 1GHz. This allows it to deliver
data rates in excess of 100Mbps using a small amount of power and operating in the same
bands as existing communications without producing significant interference.

Unique characteristics:

• Extremely difficult to intercept

• High data rate capability for communications
• Fine range resolution capability for radar
• Multi path immunity
• Common architecture for communications, radar & positioning
• Low cost, nearly “all-digital architectures”

Advantages of UWB:
• Very low transmit power
• Data rates in excess of 100Mega-bits per second
• Does not cause interference to other radio system
• UWB devices can be co-located with GPS and PCS systems
• UWB receivers can use range information to reduce interference further, optimize
network configuration and traffic flow.
• UWB’s strong resolution capability also improves the performance of the radio

Ultra Wide Band- A descriptive overview:-

UWB technology offers very effective solutions for various communications and sensing
applications, but its uncommon approach of using narrow pulses, or impulses, as a basic
signal structure rather than generating and modulating a sinusoidal carrier results in an
unusually wide emission bandwidth. Since such a wide signal covers many radio bands
and services, the conditions under which it can operate without causing undue
interference must be determined before UWB systems are allowed to proliferate.
The use of a carrier signal by nearly all existing services that share the radio spectrum
helps ensure that the bandwidth of the emissions of those signals can be kept as narrow as
possible for any given application, i.e. the bandwidth required to transmit the information
of interest or perform the necessary sensing functions. This approach allows for effective
and efficient spectrum management and frequency assignment procedures for sharing of
the radio spectrum among diverse applications and users.
UWB is alternately referred to as impulse, base band or zero-carrier technology. Ultra-
wideband systems operate coherently across a wide range of frequency spectrum relative
to the center frequency. This wide relative bandwidth governs how immune the radio will
be to multi path interference while simultaneously penetrating walls or other material. A
UWB signal can be typified by a series of low-power derivative-of-Gaussian pulses.
Each pulse is extremely short in duration, typically much shorter than the interval
corresponding to a single bit. This pulse shape is similar to the unintentional emissions
generated by consumer electronics devices. The radiated signal is often less than a PC is
allowed to radiate unintentionally. Because of the short duration of the pulses, the
frequency spectrum of a UWB signal can be many gigahertz wide, overlaying the bands
used by existing narrowband systems.

How security problem is solved:

It is just a blast of electrical noise. The key to turning that noise into communication lies
in the timing of the pulses that beat out a code. But in order to hear the information in that
code, a UWB receiver has to know the exact pulse sequence used by the transmitter. In
other words, with UWB you have to know exactly WHEN to listen in order to hear. This
makes UWB very secure.
Figure below shows examples; (a) is a narrow impulse about 1.5 ns in length from one of
the UWB

Figure(a) : An example of a short UWB pulse

Figure(b) is a longer, very complex pulse shape about 15 ns in length from a different
device. The former occupies about 3.5 GHz of spectrum and the latter about a fifth or
sixth of that.

Figure (b): An example of a long UWB pulse

Although some devices generate an impulse like that shown above in 1(a), when radiated
by an antenna, the impulse may be changed quite dramatically. Figure 1(c) shows what
the pulse shown in (a) is like after being radiated by an antenna designed to radiate UWB
signals.

Figure (c): The shape of the pulse shown in (a) radiated in space

As a result of UWB’s distribution of energy, the spectral density is extremely low. A

UWB radio will probably less than 75 nano watts of power per Megahertz of frequency
bandwidth. This will be equivalent to an aggregated power of 0.26 milli watts in contrast
to 1mW to 1W for Bluetooth radios.

Disadvantages of UWB:
• Range is limited to around one kilometer UWB trades bandwidth for distance, so longer
links are slower.
• UWB will raise the noise threshold for the radio astronomers.
Major UWB Application Areas:-

• Surveillance Systems
• Medical Systems
• Through-wall Imaging Systems
• Wall Imaging Systems
• Ground Penetrating Radar Systems

In my View:-

As it can be seen - the ultra wide range applications of Ultra Wide Band among wireless
communications, it is an open secret that this technology can come as a threat to the
existing technologies within near future. Though the coverage range is only one
kilometer, this is only the beginning. It is surprising that a no carrier base band signal can
travel so fast (1Giga bits per second) and still cover one kilometer. Revolutionary
changes can be expected in the field of Mobile communications with the dream speeds
coming true some day.

• Using a narrow band carrier for the signal modulation may increase the coverage range
without compromising with the large bandwidth it poses.
• UWB is not restricted only to wireless communications. It can also travel through
cables and wires yielding 1Giga bits per second- data rate
So, this may lead us back to older wire-communications, but at faster speeds.