Impulse-based UWB Systems and Applications

SPEAKER: Tor Sverre (Bassen) Lande, Professor, Dept. of Informatics, University of Oslo, NorwayABSTRACT: The old idea of impulse radio dates back to Marconi's first wireless transmissions using sparks. Unlike most wireless today, impulse radio transmissions are extremely wideband signals. The recently FCC-released frequency band from 3.1GHz to 10.6GHz is the widest unlicensed frequency band every released (7.5GHz). This ultra wide bandwidth (UWB) is commercially explored for even faster data transfer using traditional, multi-band (OFDM) RF techniques. However, the available bandwidth is wide enough for impulse radio transmission giving new functionality and new implementation challenges.I will show how power efficient impulse radio solutions are feasible in standard digital CMOS technology. Quite non-standard and untraditional design strategies must be used including time-domain signal processing. Circuit topologies for higher order Gaussian pulse generation and power efficient, correlating RAKE receivers will be explained.Impulse radio transmissions have additional interesting properties compared to narrowband modulation.-With time-domain processing (TDOA) highly accurate positioning is feasible in the millimeter range.-Improved sensitivity for robust communication.-Large number of channels (>100).Novel applications are also feasible using impulse transmission. Combining unconventional design techniques like "Swept-Threshold sampling" and digital lossless integration, micropower impulse radar is feasible in CMOS. A >30GHz sampler is used to accumulate and recover reflected electromagnetic energy. These new sensing devices (medical radar) may be explored for reading vital body signs (pulse, breathing) embedded in your car seat or hospital emergency bed. Just imagine what you can do looking though heavy matter!BIO: Tor Sverre Lande is a professor in the Microelectronic Systems at the Department of Informatics, University of Oslo. From 2004 he is also serving as a visiting professor at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Imperial College, London, UK. His primary research is related to microelectronics, both digital and analog. Research fields are neuromorphic engineering, analog signal processing, micropower circuit design, biomedical circuits and systems and impulse radio. He is the author or co-author of more than 90 scientific publications with chapters in two books. He is currently serving as an associate editor of several scientific journals. He has served as guest editor of special issues like IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, vol. II, special issue on "Floating Gate Circuits and Systems", Jan 2001, and IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, vol. I, special issue on "Biomedical Circuits and Systems", (Vol 52, 12, Dec. 2005). He is/has been a technical committee member of several international conferences and has served as reviewer for a number of international technical journals. He has served as Technical Program Chair for several international conferences (ISCAS 2003 in Bangkok, NORCHIP 2004 in Oslo, BioCAS workshop 2004 in Singapore, BioCAS 2006 in UK). He was chair elect (2003-2005) of the IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems technical committee (BioCAS) and is also a member of other CAS technical committee. In 2006 he was appointed Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (CAS) and elected member of CAS Board of Governors. He is also serving as Editor-in-Chief of the new IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems. In 2006 he was appointed Senior Member of the IEEE.

Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Mayumi Thrasher