New UWB Method To Improve Exploitation

This week a new type of ultrawideband radio was exposed at the International Conference on Ultra-Wideband. According to the advertisers of the new product, the approach solves some major exploitation problems. The new technique was invented by the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) engineers. It uses a mixer instead of a delay line, and it allows localization of transmitters to within centimeters and at the same time permits low data-rate communications. Electrical and computer engineering professor Dennis Goeckel said: "For many ultrawideband applications, such as monitoring patients in a hospital, you only need low data rates for telemetry, but you need to know exactly where the patient is located. For this application, ultrawideband communications is perfect."

For almost a decade the main attempt was to use delay lines, i.e. to send a nanosecond-sized beat between the data beats. This way the radio was given a period in which it would search the spectrum for bits of data. Nevertheless, according to Goeckel, most of the research has now stopped. Goeckel said the delay lines were extremely difficult to build, so he and his doctoral student Qu Zhang have invented a new method.

The new method uses a mixer instead of a delay line. The mixer is easy to build even for very short beats. The beats are mixed with the data bits and multiplied by a cosine. On the other end there is another mixer with two inputs. The research was mainly supported by UWB research grant from the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Southern California, and University of Massachusetts.

                                 

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