Ultra Wide Band (UWB) Ad-hoc Networks: Review and Trends

Short-range wireless systems have recently gained a lot of attention to provide seamless, multimedia communications around a user-centric concept in so called Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN). Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) technology presents itself as a good candidate for the Physical Layer (PHY) of WPAN, both for high and low data rate applications. Many ongoing developments of Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) system concentrate mainly on the physical layer, without significant considerations being given to the medium access techniques especially for targeted ad-hoc networking scenarios. Here, we further refine the framework, the network challenges, and defines a global network cost function, which takes into account both physical, and network layers parameters to derive general guidelines for ad-hoc networks based on UWB technology.