Technology Tradeoffs for a Worldwide UWB Transceiver

The recent history of Ultrawideband communications technology has seen great debate over whether UWB causes unacceptable interference to existing users of the same and nearby bands, particularly in 3-5 GHz. In the current regulatory environment, the UWB industry must work with incumbent users to implement interference mitigation techniques that are generally called Detect and Avoid (DAA). Because of the difficulties in practical DAA implementation, UWB products designed for global deployment will quickly migrate to bands above 6 GHz. Design of UWB chipsets that span the entire range from 3.1-10.6 GHz will be highly desirable, but these pose daunting challenges to RF ASIC designers.