DS-UWB (Direct Sequence UWB)
A proposed specification for emerging wireless personal area networks.
DS-UWB uses a combination of a single-carrier spread-spectrum design and wide coherent bandwidth. The UWB Forum, an industry organization focused on UWB design and application, which developed DS-UWB, says it provides low-fading, optimal interference characteristics, inherent frequency diversity and precision ranging capabilities.
Unlike conventional wireless systems, which use narrowband modulated carrier waves to transmit information, DS-UWB transmits data by pulses of energy generated at very high rates: in excess of 1 billion pulses per second, providing support for data rates of 28M, 55M, 110M, 220M, 500M, 660M and 1320M bit/sec. A fixed UWB chip rate in conjunction with variable-length spreading code words enables this scalable support.
DS-UWB provides four key advantages over legacy wireless technologies: quality of service; high data rates that scale to 1G bit/sec or more; lower cost; and longer battery life. These attributes mean DS-UWB is well suited to be the physical layer for PANs.
By using the widest possible bandwidth to produce the shortest possible pulses, DS-UWB supports robust, high-data-rate links in a high multipath environment and offers precise spatial resolution for location detection of UWB devices. (A multipath environment is one in which radio waves bounce off many objects, resulting in ghosts and fades that tend to break other approaches.)
By capitalizing on coherent processing over the entire frequency band, DS-UWB allows the best theoretically possible performance in high multipath environments, such as homes.
And by generating continuous smooth white noise at lower levels than competing approaches, DS-UWB will minimize interference. It does not cause any harmful interference to existing spectrum users, a key concern of worldwide regulators.
DS-UWB technology provides scalable performance across a range of application requirements - from high data rates of up to 1G bit/sec to extremely low power consumption. The technology reduces implementation complexity while allowing increased scalability, making it ideal for applications such as high-rate data transfers or power-constrained handheld devices.
From DS-UWB enables convergence, Network World Tech Update, 06/14/04.
Additional resources
DS-UWB standards
Links to relevant documents.
IEEE 802.15.3a task group
Wireless research center
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