Ultra Wide Band and the Battle of the Universities

Safe and Sound with UWB - Security, rescue, monitoring: Communication in 2010

Ultra Wide Band (UWB) is the wireless technology of the near future. It uses very small high-frequency pulses to transmit information, rather than a carrier wave, as is the case with other wireless systems including GSM, radio, TV, UMTS and Bluetooth.

This gives UWB very different characteristics, which offer new possibilities for our wireless future, such as high bandwidth, many simultaneous user channels, accurate location tracing, low transmitting power, and a very low level of radiation. The variety of applications that can use UWB is therefore very wide.

 

 

UWB applications

Among applications for consumers are those in the area of home entertainment systems, for example. In comparison to existing solutions for wireless local area networks (WLAN) and personal area networks (PAN), UWB promises enormous benefits, in particular for communications over short distances. It is difficult to eavesdrop on UWB, and the transmission speeds and number of users at any one time will be very high: dozens of machines in a very limited space will be able to exchange information flows of many Mbit/s. Moreover, environments with many reflective surfaces do not affect reception. These characteristics make UWB highly suitable for high-quality wireless multi-media applications (playing streaming video, connecting camcorders to TVs, HDTV applications). And that is why it has an excellent chance of becoming an important standard for so-called fourth generation wireless and mobile networks.

 

Location tracing

 

Apart from communications, UWB also has other important applications. The ultra-short pulses are comparable to radar pulses. This means the receiver can determine the position of objects to a very accurate degree. For certain situations, this is of great importance, such as in the case of luggage labels at airports, or tracking valuable items in offices and warehouses. It is also possible to make a virtual dome that detects intruders from the outside, but which does not respond to the presence of people on the inside.

 

Disasters

As UWB is not affected by walls or other obstacles, it can also be used in disaster areas - for locating victims underneath the rubble of collapsed buildings for instance, but also as a means of communication between rescue workers. It could also be useful for detection agencies, such as for the purpose of locating refugees hiding in containers.

 

 

Process industry

Industry is also showing interest in UWB. In due course it should be possible to run and optimise processes by using wireless sensors that communicate via UWB.

 

 

Battle of the Universities

UWB therefore has everything that is needed to become the wireless technology of the future. In order to explain what UWB is and the possibilities that it will offer, a team of TU Delft researchers and students have entered the ‘Academische Jaarprijs’. This is an annual contest, organised by the ‘NRC Handelsblad’ newspaper, in which universities present plans to make their research as interesting as possible to a wide audience. The winner receives one hundred thousand euros to help them actually realise their plans.

UWB and the ‘Academische Jaarprijs’

The UWB team is hoping to be able to use the prize money to make a teaching package for school pupils. It is also intending to use the money to develop an indoor game, in which four teams in a maze have to find certain items using UWB. The players can use UWB to monitor the position of their team mates as well as that of their opponents. The players can also be given special tasks as part of the game, regardless of their position at the time. The exact design of the game has not been finalised yet, but a significant aspect is that the players themselves can make the game more complex with the help of UWB. The game will be designed to have a distinctly interactive element.

You can read all about UWB and the progress of the team:

© 2012 TU Delft

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