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1 OVERVIEW
Ultra wideband (UWB) characterizes transmission systems with instantaneous spectral occupancy in excess of 500 MHz and is a fast emerging technology with uniquely attractive features inviting major advances in wireless communications, networking, radar, imaging, and positioning systems. Interestingly, scholars and researchers have predicted that it is the promising solutions for future short-range communication thus UWB transmission has recently received significant attention in both academia and industry for applications in wireless communications. Despite these attractive features, interest in UWB devices prior to 2001 was primarily limited to radar systems, mainly for military applications, due to bandwidth resources becoming increasingly scarce and also its interference with other commutation networks [1], however, there was substantial change in February 2002, when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) (2002a, b) issued a ruling that UWB could be used for data communications as well as for radar and safety applications [2]. Interestingly, with similar regulatory processes currently under way in many countries worldwide, industry, government agencies and academic institutions responded to this FCC ruling with rapidly growing research efforts targeting exciting UWB applications including: short-range very high-speed broadband access to the Internet, covert communication links, localization at centimeter-level accuracy, high-resolution ground-penetrating radar, through-wall imaging, precision navigation and asset tracking. UWB has a lot of benefits and possibilities and this could be seen by examining Shannons famous capacity equation which is familiar to anyone who has studied communication or information theory. Capacity is important, as more demanding audio-visual applications require higher and higher bit rates. This equation tells us that there are three things that we can do to improve the capacity of the channel. We can increase the bandwidth, increase the signal power or decrease the noise. We also can see that the capacity of a channel grows linearly with increasing bandwidth but only logarithmically with signal power. The UWB channel has an abundance of bandwidth and in fact can trade off some of the bandwidth for reduced signal power and interference from other sources. Thus, from Shannons equation we can see that UWB systems have a great potential for high-capacity wireless communications [3]. The key benefits of UWB can be summarized as: high data rates, low

equipment cost, multipath immunity and ranging and communication at the same time [1]. UWB has several applications all the way from wireless communications to radar imaging, and vehicular radar. The ultra wide bandwidth and hence the wide variety of material penetration capabilities allows UWB to be used for radar imaging systems, including ground penetration radars, wall radar imaging, through-wall radar imaging, surveillance systems, and medical imaging. Images within or behind obstructed objects can be obtained with a high resolution using UWB. Similarly, the excellent time resolution and accurate ranging capability of UWB can be used for vehicular radar systems for collision avoidance, guided parking, etc. Positioning location and relative positioning capabilities of UWB systems are other great applications that have recently received significant attention. Last but not least is the wireless communication application, which is arguably the reason why UWB became part of the wireless world, including wireless home networking, high-density use in office buildings and business cores, UWB wireless mouse, keyboard, wireless speakers, wireless USB, high-speed WPAN/WBAN, wireless sensors networks, wireless telemetry, and telemedicine.