Even though academic researchers do not become principally frustrated with their research- trajectory and/or outcome, they must be continuously backed up by handsome funds until their researches come to conclusions. It was a serious matter of thinking to many researchers when Intel pulled its support for UWB and supporter WiQuest shut down later in 2008. Even, Tzero closed up shop in 2009. These eventually carried the ultimate of this technology, leaving the small sentence "UWB is all but dead". However, Thanks to Samsung, Alereon, CSR, Staccato for their endless effort to bring the UWB in today's market!
Last year, Hanshin Information Technology announced the beginning the mass production for its wireless USB (WUSB) multimedia solution. They designed HUWB-3000 Kit to connect any windows-based computer to HDTV or projector wirelessly. This uses an UWB connection to send audio and video.

In this year, Samsung has introduced its Central Station to wirelessly connect laptop to stunning 23" or 27" LED-backlit full 1080p HD display and up to four USB devices. It provides you an expanded desktop workspace when you need it, without sacrificing portability when you don't. This amazing device has used Alereon UWB wireless solutions!

I still rationally think UWB is a promising candidate to pioneer high rate WPAN. Even, many analysts think Intel will buy the UWB technology at the end. I would like to say that UWB is not dead at all; we have great expectations from this technology and hence should give more time to adequately bring UWB in our daily life. lastly, let's watch a video where Alereon's Mike Krell talks about the current state of ultra-wideband (UWB) technology and demonstrates its use in wireless HDMI and docking stations.

What should we bear in our mind- UWB is alive, isn't it? Long live UWB.

Inha UWB Wireless Communications Research Center is a laboratory where persons involved are currently working on the development of ultra wideband (UWB) wireless technology. “What Korea needs now is the establishment of an eight-lane highway for data to travel wirelessly. Korea has been doing a fantastic job of generalizing high speed internet. But the trend suggests that home theater systems, u-healthy devices, and even intelligent transportation systems are all going wireless. RFID tags are at a high cost, yet errors occur when a large quantity of boxed products pass through the reader. While the current internet cable can transfer data up to terra gigabits per second, the wireless speed only reaches up to 54 megabits per second. In order to backup the wireless trend, we must go for ultra wideband,” said Director Kwak Kyung-sup of UWB Wireless Communications Research Center.

In the near future when the digital home is common, people will be sharing huge amounts of data, video, music and photos among networked consumer electronics, PCs, and mobile devices throughout the home and even remotely. Brothers and sisters will be able to stream video content from electronic devices such as camcorders and DVD players to HDTV displays on the walls without using any wired networks.

Inha UWB Center, which opened in November 2003, has shown a great deal of success in coming up with excellent studies on UWB wireless technology. It has seen 19 papers carried in the world-famous Science Citation Index last year alone. Over five years, the number of papers, handed in at home and abroad, has reached 495. Since its debut, it has recorded 30 patent applications and 8 registrations, including 8 international patent applications. It has also come up with 89 test products as a result of collaborations with business and industry. Most remarkable is that it has transferred 11 cases of technologies to businesses and has helped companies overcome their limits in terms of technologies in 79 cases.

Inha’s global recognition brought many co-partners from all around the world. Among them were University of South California in USA, Simon Frazer University in Canada and Wudian University in China. This year Inha UWB Wireless Communications Research Center is focusing on three major subjects: Secured UWB wireless for automobiles, Commercialization of WBAN transmitting & MAC technology, and development of UWB/mm-wave transmitting technology. “The center was designed to lead the technology in UWB and to enhance the competence in the UWB wars ahead,” said Kwak. “UWB wireless communications will soon be realized in homes and offices,” he continued, “All devices will be connected on the platform of UWB.” UWB wireless communications will indeed become essential in the ubiquitous society. Inha’s frontier research, therefore, brings forth great expectations.

Inspired by the upcoming trends of UWB wireless technology, I am doing my academic research work on UWB Technology under the supervision of Professor Kyung Sup Kwak since March 2008.

According to National Center of Health Statistic (NHCS), the leading cause of annual deaths in the US is heart disease, i.e., 652,486 and 150,074 people die due to cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. The ratio is 17% in South Korea. The healthcare expenditure in the US is expected to reach 2.9 trillion by 2009 and 4 trillion by 2015, or 20% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death and it accounts for approximately 30% of all deaths worldwide. In UK, it is 39% of all deaths. In Europe, 90% of people die due to arrhythmogenic event. Irregular heart beat causes such deaths and can be monitored before heart attack. Holter monitor is used to collect cardio rhythm disturbances but the system doesn’t provide real-time feedback and the ECG data is collected for offline processing. Transient abnormalities are sometimes hard to capture. For instance, many cardiac diseases are associated with episodic rather than continuous abnormalities such as transient surges in blood pressure, paroxysmal arrhythmias or induced episodes of myocardial ischemia and their time cannot be predicted. The accurate prediction of these episodes provides high quality health services.

Wireless body area network (WBAN) is a key technology to prevent the occurrence of myocardial infarction, monitoring episodic events or any other abnormal condition and can be used for long term monitoring of patients. The seamless integration of small and intelligent wireless sensors is used to monitor the patient’s vital signs and provide real-time feedback. They are used to develop a smart and affordable healthcare system and can be a part of diagnostic procedure, maintenance of chronic condition, supervised recovery from a surgical procedure and to monitor effects of drugs therapy. A WBAN usually consists of three levels. The first level is called sensor level, which consists of low power miniaturised sensors such as electrocardiogram (ECG)-used to monitor electrical activity of heart, oxygen saturation sensor (SpO2)-used to measure the level of oxygen, electromyography (EMG)-used to monitor muscle’s activity and electroencephalography (EEG)-used to monitor brain’s electrical activity. The second level comprises of a PDA or central intelligent node, which gathers vital information of a patient and communicates with a remote station. The third level consists of a remote base station, which keeps patient medical records and provides diagnostic recommendations.

On the other hand, ultra-wideband (UWB) technology has gained much attention during the last few years as a potential candidte for future wireless short-range data communication. FCC has already alocated the spectrum from 3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz for UWB applications. Due to its large bandwidth UWB has the promise of high data rates. A particular type of UWB communication is impulse radio, where very short transient pulses are transmitted rather than a modulated carrier. Consequently, the spectrum is spread over several GHz, complying with the definition of UWB. Currently, the rake receiver is considered to be a very promising candidate for UWB reception, due to its capability of collecting multipath components. However, perfect synchronization can never be accomplished. Another issue is the matching of the template with the received pulse. Moreover, often a lot of rake fingers are required to accommodate the wireless channel, rendering it riot favorable from an implementation point of view. Indeed low complexity rake receivers are being investigated. The transmitted reference (TR) scheme proposed by Hoctor and Tamlinson does not suffer from the above problems and requires fewer RF building blocks compared to the multiple finger rake receiver. The core part of the transmitted reference scheme receiver, alternatively known as “autocorrelation receiver in which TR scheme can be implemented by transmitting pair of identical pulses (called doublets) separated by a time interval D, known to both receiver and transmitter.The transmitted data is encoded by relative phases of tow pulses. The first pulse act as reference and the second pulse is the modulated one. The receiver delays the first pulse by the delay D, multiplies it with the second pulse and integrates the result over one delay length, which in fact correlates the two pulses. When using polar NRZ modulation, for a logical zero, a pulse is transmitted, subsequently followed by a polarity reversed pulse. To send a logical one, two pulses with the same polarity are sent sequentially. The absolute value of the output after integration is in fact the energy of the pulse while the polarity of the output contains the data. If the output is negative, this corresponds to a logical zero, which a positive output corresponds to a logical one. Thus, the information is in the relative polarity of the two pulses and the delay between them acts as a synchronization mechanism. As long as the two consecutive pulses have corresponding waveforms except for their polarity, the autocorrelation receiver can detect them properly.Further mathematical Analysis shows that TR based UWB receiver can be used as low power receiving technology for WBAN.

In Fact, we the members of Telecommunication Engineering Research Lab have alreday contributed to the development of WBAN Technology and efforts are continuosly going on. I feel happy to put small contribution to this technology from myself also.