Playing with Fire: Exploring Concurrent Transmissions in Ultra-wideband Radios

Concurrent transmissions can be used to enhance network reliability and scalability and to reduce energy consumption and latency. This paper studies their applicability for communication and ranging in UWB networks, where they are hitherto largely unexplored. To this end, we follow an experiment-driven approach and show that i) different pulse repetition frequencies virtually double the number of non-interfering channels, ii) concurrent transmissions with different preamble codes are unreliable, unless transmitters are tightly synchronized, and iii) under the same RF configuration, UWB radios are very likely to receive one of the packets transmitted concurrently by multiple senders, unlocking opportunities similar to those exploited in low-power narrowband radios. We argue that our findings can inform the design of novel communication and ranging protocols exploiting the unique advantages of concurrent transmissions, potentially inspiring a new wave of research on UWB radios.