Overview of research and development activities in NICT UWB consortium

This paper presents an overview of research and development (R&D) activities on ultra-wideband (UWB) technologies in the NICT UWB consortium. NICT started to research UWB technologies in 2002, and organized the UWB consortium in cooperation with more than 20 companies and 6 universities in Japan. We have done and are doing a lot of R&D activities, which include developing MMIC chips, UWB antennas and UWB testbed, measuring UWB signal propagation, and making standards for IEEE 802.15 wireless personal area networks (WPANs). Our activities in 24-GHz band UWB systems are briefly introduced, where multifunctional UWB systems have been investigated. Finally, UWB testroom is introduced, which is a test site for evaluating the spatial distributions of UWB signals by using a 3D scanner.