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With 7,500 MHz of unlicensed frequency available, UWB [Ultra-Wide Bandwidth] is emerging as a high-speed system for extremely short range data transmission.

UWB or 802.15.3 is a study group under the IEEE and operates within the presence of other 802.11 Wi-Fi systems. That is, UWB will co-exist with Wi-Fi systems. In other words, if a UWB system detects an 802.11 signal, it will change frequency. The technical requirements for UWB so far are (subject to change):

• Bit rate - 110 and 200 megabits and up to 480

• Range - 30 feet and 12 feet
• Power consumption - 100 and 250 miliwatts
• Frequency range - 3.1 to 7.1 GHz - giga Hertz
• Channel bandwidth - 500 MHz - mega Hertz

UWB signals are designed for short-range, low-power applications such as motion-detection (auto collision detectors), monitoring large numbers of sensors like weather, hazardous materials, inventory tracking, home automation, and many others including range-finding (determining distances) for military (bomb-finding) and penetrating capabilities such as stud-finding (nails in walls). Here is a graphic of UWB versus Spread Spectrum signal bursts. As you can see, UWB is sending short bursts or signal pulses over a wide or large number of frequencies. Whereas, Spread Spectrum is larger bursts over a smaller number of different frequencies.

In other words, short versus long bursts and wide versus narrow frequency bands.

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[tags]techtionary,uwb,ultra-wide bandwidth,spread spectrum,signal pulse[/tags]