GENERAL DESCRIPTION:
The purpose of this project is to develop a new form of digital wireless communication - ultra-wideband (or UWB) - that has the potential to transmit voice and data much more efficiently than existing techniques. We hope it will provide for better, faster, and more secure, wireless transmission of data between computers, as well as the ability to determine your location very accurately. In the long run, this technology could really benefit California in particular, since we are at the heart of the national computer and telecommunications industry, and we need to develop new techniques to keep our leadership role.

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT:
The goal of this research project is to address some of the technical issues that stand between Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology and its successful deployment in the marketplace. UWB technology has potential benefits for radar, location tracking, and communications applications. From a broad perspective, our long-term goals on this project are the development of time-spread and multi-carrier UWB systems. The specific aims that the proposed project intends to pursue are:

1. Development of coding and modulation techniques in order to control the spectral characteristics of the UWB signal, allowing efficient use of the bandwidth allocated by the FCC
2. Development and assessment of multiple-access techniques for UWB impulse radio
3. Assessment of the effect of ISI (inter-symbol interference) due to multipath propagation in an indoor environment
4. Investigation of  the use of spatial diversity in order to enhance the rate and the BER (bit error rate) performance of current UWB impulse radio systems
5. Investigation of techniques to reduce the peak-average ratio of the transmitted UWB waveform, and new design techniques to improve the power efficiency of such a system
   

PARTICIPATING FACULTY:
The following CWC faculty are participating in this research project: Larry Larson and Larry Milstein.