
Foreword
by EdmondJ. Thomas
It was Valentine's Day 2002, and I was the chief engineer of the Federal Commu-
nications Commission. I sat before an open meeting of the commission and rec-
ommended, on behalf of the Office of Engineering and Technology, that it
approve a Report & Order authorizing ultra wideband (UWB) for use in the
United States. This ended one of the most contentious proceedings in the history
of the commission.
The opposition to UWB stemmed from the fact that for the first time in its his-
tory, the FCC was considering authorizing a technology that could occupy 7.5 GHz
(3.1