Is radio spectrum a scarce resource?

9 February 2005 Telecoms, Datacoms, Wireless, IoT

Is ultrawideband (UWB) just another method to communicate wirelessly? At first look, it may seem so. A high speed method for transferring video and data without cables, it enables both aesthetics and freedom to decide where devices are located. And UWB allows mobile devices to interact with the line-powered world without cables.

But according to ABI Research analyst Alan Varghese, ultrawideband is about much more than high speed wireless transfer. In the history of wireless comms, the first phase used analog modulations such as AM and FM to transmit data. The next captured the benefits that digital methods such as BPSK, QAM, FSK and their variations allowed. The last phase was to maximise the number of users within a band of spectrum, via complex schemes such as FDMA, TDMA and CDMA.

With today's immense demand for wireless communications, there is a troubling shortage of radio spectrum: we have squeezed out all we can get through advanced modulation, coding, and multiple access schemes.

Enter ultrawideband. Its extremely low power and wide band allow coexistence, taking us back to the dawn of the wireless age when spectrum was plentiful, and all we needed was technology to take advantage of it.

The electronics chipset and equipment companies involved in the UWB space are making history all over again. And those that are not may be getting left out of a new chapter in wireless communications.

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