UWB Systems For Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are emerging as an important area for communications. They enable a wealth of new applications including surveillance, building control, factory automation, and in-vehicle sensing. The sensor nodes have to operate under severe constraints on energy consumption and form factor, and provide the ability for precise self-location of the nodes. These requirements can be fulfilled very well by various forms of Ultra WideBand (UWB) transmission technology. The authors discuss various techniques and trade-offs in UWB systems and indicate that time-hopping and frequency hopping impulse radio physical layers combined with simple multiple-access techniques like ALOHA are suitable designs.