Site Outline

 Project Overview:

We are investigating possible means for energy efficient smart UWB systems for communications and radar applications.

• Low-power CMOS UWB Radios

We are developing digital CMOS UWB radios with a high data rate (100 Mbps) and compliant to the upcoming IEEE standard 802.15.3a. The radio architecture is based on our frequency domain approach. The key idea for the proposed method is to extract the frequency components of the received signal and to perform signal processing in the frequency domain. The proposed frequency domain approach relaxes the speed requirement for ADCs and reduces complexity of a rake receiver. In addition, the proposed method allows use of narrowband LNAs.
 

• UWB Radios for RFID

UWB is a promising technology for RFID, which requires low cost, low-power, and small size. Currently, we are developing ultra low-power transmitter chips, which can be planted on plastic cards or badges. Our design approach is to minimize the circuit complexity at the transmitter side, while a high performance receiver compensates any performance degradation at the transmitter side.
 

• Energy Efficient Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks

Our research concerns an energy efficient UWB radio interface for sensor nodes, which are small, operate at low data rates, and have extremely limited and finite energy. For sensor networks, it is undesirable to trade-off additional circuit area and processing complexity to achieve more efficient communications in terms of radiated energy per bit. Sensor network applications must consider the costs of signal processing as well as the radio efficiency. Instead of attempting to use diversity schemes that increase signal processing area and power, this project proposes a novel UWB system design that considers energy efficiency in terms of both radiated energy and processing energy.
 

• Accurate UWB Ranging for Asset Location and Wireless Sensor Networks

Two important parameters in delay estimation are signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and signal bandwidth. Since a UWB signal has a wide bandwidth, it is a good candidate for accurate ranging. Iterative pulse reception through averaging is a promising method, which approaches the theoretical lower bound on range estimation error. We are investigating enhancements to ranging accuracy under various circumstances and environments based on an iterative pulse reception technique.

 Research Members:

Currently, there are nine student researchers for UWB research.

 

Name	Email	Level	Research Topic
Nathaniel August	nateaugu@vt.edu	Ph.D.	Energy Efficient Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Network
Woo Cheol Chung	woochung@vt.edu	Ph.D.	Signaling for High-Speed Inter- and Intra-Chip Interconnect
Sajay Jose	sjose@vt.edu	M.S.	RFIC Design - UWB Power Amplifiers
Sweta Kalantri		M.S.	CMOS UWB Radio Design
Hyung-Jin Lee	hlee@vt.edu	Ph.D.	CMOS UWB Radio Design
Rajesh Thirugnanam	thirugnr@vt.edu	Ph.D.	High-Speed Low Power Folding ADCs
Shen Wang	shwang@vt.edu	Ph.D.	High-Speed Frequency Synthesizer and DAC Design

 Relevant Publications:

• VTVT publications

• Antennas Radars (radar singal processing)
• Architectures (systems and networks)
• Channels
• Circuits
• Miscellaneous
• Overview (history and trend)
• RF ICs
• Signalings (coding, modulation, and demodulation)
• Ranging_mobile_location
• Sensor_static_location
• Tutorials

• Articles, Presentations
• Books
• Patents

Note that the papers in the above areas are copyrighted by the publishers.

 Useful Links and Documents:

The following links and documents might be helpful to those trying to get a handle on UWB.
 

·  Conferences

·  UWBST2004/ ISUWBS

·  Upcoming Call For Papers in Communications and Sensor Networks

·  Univesities

·  APL at Johns Hopkins University

·  CACC at North Carolina State University

·  CSPL at University of Michigan

·  CWC at University of California, San Diego

·  CWC and TL at Univeristy of Oulu, Finland

·  ESL at Ohio State University

·  iCORE WCL at University of Alberta, Canada

·  Kohno Lab. at Yokohama National University, Yokohama, Japan

·  SMIrC at Stanford University

·  SPINCOM at University of Minnesota

·  UltraLab at University of Southern California

·  UWB group at University of California, Berkeley

·  Companies and Organizations

·  Aether Wire & Location, Inc.

·  Alereon, Inc.

·  ATL at SONY

·  AT&T Research Labs (Red bank, NJ)

·  Broadband Wireless Association

·  Communications Research Laboratory (Japan)

·  Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (Korea)

·  General Atomics (Advanced Wireless Group)

·  GE Corporate Research & Development (Schenectady, NY)

·  IEEE 802.15 Wireless PAN

·  Innnovative Wireless Technology

·  Intel Architecture Lab.

·  Intelligent Automation, Inc.

·  Multiband Coalition

·  Multiband OFDM Alliance (MBOA) (Merged from Multiband Coalition)

·  Multispectral Solutions, Inc.

·  Pulse-Link (fantasma)

·  Russian UWB group

·  Staccato Communications, Inc.(formerly Discrete Time Communications)

·  TimeDomain

·  Ultrawideband Planet

·  UWB working group

·  XtremeSpectrum

• Government Agencies
  • DARPA (Depense Advanced Research Projects Agency)
  • FCC (Federal Communications Commission)
  • LLNL (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories)
  • NSF (National Science Foundation)
  • NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration)
  • US Army Research Laboratory

Project OverviewResearch Members  Relevant Publications Useful Links and Documents

Comments to: Dong Ha (ha@vt.edu)
Last Updated: November 6, 2004
http://www.ee.vt.edu/~ha/research/uwb/uwb.html