Ultra-Wideband Communications: Fundamentals and Applications

1.8. Single Band vs. Multiband

The ability of UWB technology to provide very high data rates for short ranges (less than 10 meters) has made it an excellent candidate for the physical layer of the IEEE 802.15.3a standard for wireless personal area networks (WPANs). However, two opposing groups of UWB developers are battling over the IEEE standard. The two competing technologies are single band and multiband. The single-band technique, backed by Motorola/XtremeSpectrum, supports the idea of impulse radio that is the original approach to UWB by using narrow pulses that occupy a large portion of the spectrum. The multiband approach divides the available UWB frequency spectrum (3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz) into multiple smaller and nonoverlapping bands with ...