Ultra-Wideband : Past , Present and Future White Paper

Foreword This White Paper represents the outcome of EUWB, a major research project supported by the European Commission dedicated to exploring the enormous economic potential of ultra-wideband (UWB) radio technology for key European industrial sectors. The objective of this document is to offer a comprehensive yet concise account of the innovative and disruptive potential of UWB. Specifically, it will address the history, unique legal framework and fundamental challenges of UWB, as well as the difficulties that it has faced from the technical regulatory and standardisation perspectives. Finally, the driving forces and future applications that will bring UWB to the wider market, including the latest product developments and market trends, will be described. Traditional radio communications system designs are based on the assumption that the received signal is an attenuated replica of the transmitted signal mainly degraded by the radio channel characteristics and thermal noise in the receiver. This holds true while the number of radio services and transmitting devices remains limited, which was the case for a relatively long period of time during the last century. System separation was realised using non-adaptive traditional analogue filters with their inherently low degree of flexibility. Consequently, frequency spectrum regulatory policy favoured the granting of exclusive frequency rights to dedicated radio services valid for long periods of time. Following on from this precedent, current radio frequency regulation is still based on frequency separations which are allocated for long periods (tens of years). With the introduction of bi-directional cellular radio systems into the mass market the system design situation has changed significantly. The system design paradigm now takes additional signals, including interference into account. Interference from adjacent channels allocated to nearby users (due to non-ideal filters) and neighbouring fixed transmitters (due to frequency re-use in cellular systems) is considered in general to be inevitable and is taken into account in system design and rollout. This so called intra-system interference is accepted by the radio service provider (operator) mainly due to the fact, that he can strictly control this interference by means of network planning, intelligent resource allocation and traffic load control. Therefore, it is relatively easy for the operator to guarantee a desired link quality and thus a certain quality of service (QoS) for the customer. Determination of the appropriate link margin during network planning is the major technique used to achieve the required QoS. Today's modern digital radio services such as digital audio and …