Prof. Robert Scholtz, a specialist in ultrawideband (UWB) radio technology, gave the plenary talk at the Third Annual Conference on UWB Systems and Technologies, May 18-21, in Kyoto, Japan.
Prof. Scholtz reviewed research on UWB indoor propagation and its effect on UWB radio design. He also pointed out that a survey of UWB specialists indicated they believe notably difficult technological problems are achieving 1 Gbps aggregate data rate to a single receiver in a multiple access environment and building an all-digital receiver that employs the full Federal Communications Commission (FCC)-allocated band from 3.1 to 10.6 gigahertz.
He said respondents thought the most fruitful business opportunities would be in applications to position location and personal area networks.
UWB technology uses pulses of radio energy rather than radio waves to transmit information wirelessly in a digital form, offering a broad range of possible applications, from home networking to radio frequency (RF) tagging, to advanced radar systems. For complete survey results, visit http://ultra.usc.edu/New_Site.