An Introduction to Ultra-Wideband Communication, Circuits, and Systems

Professor David Wentzloff,
Assistant Professor, EECS Department,
University of Michigan

Ultra-wideband radio (UWB) is a rapidly developing wireless technology that promises unprecedented high-data-rates for short-range commercial radios, while also promising precise locationing and high-energy efficiency for low-data-rate radios in RFID tags or sensor networks. These benefits stem from the use of wide bandwidths and pulsed signaling, implying high-channel capacity and precise time resolution. UWB has been used for military radar and imaging since the 1950's, and in 2002, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the use of the 3.1–10.6GHz band for unlicensed UWB applications. The restriction placed on the transmitted power spectral density for a UWB radio is the same power level the FCC places on noise emission of household digital electronics. UWB radios, therefore, transmit below the "noise floor" of other devices, essentially reusing this band for communication. Because the "noise floor" overlaps several existing wireless bands, UWB radios must operate in the presence of very strong in-band interference, presenting a challenge to the design of UWB circuits and systems. This talk will present some history on UWB, the on-going efforts to create wireless standards using the UWB band, and a chipset recently developed in 90nm CMOS to implement a 16Mb/s wireless link.
David D. Wentzloff received the B.S.E. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1999, and the S.M. and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, in 2002 and 2007, respectively. In the summer of 2004, he interned in the Portland Technology Development group at Intel in Hillsboro, OR. Since August 2007, he has been with the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he is currently an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He is the recipient of the 2002 MIT Masterworks award, and the 2004 Analog Devices Distinguished Scholar award. He is serving as a member of the technical program committee for the International Conference on Ultra-Wideband. He is a member of IEEE and Tau Beta Pi.