Advent of practical UWB localization: (R)Evolution in UWB antenna research

The UWB antenna research provides design approaches that enable transmission of sub-nanosecond pulses without any distortion. At the same time, advances in communications theory and digital signal processing enable practical ranging systems with precisions below 3 cm with pulse bandwidths of 500 MHz. Thus one could be misled to believe that the UWB antenna research is dead simply because current antenna designs can accommodate bandwidth requirements for years to come. However, this paper points out that with the UWB localization systems entering the stage of mass production, new research challenges associated with the integration of antennas in real systems occur. Using application examples, the paper introduces some of these issues. It also is concludes that antenna designers can substantially contribute towards the precision of UWB localization. To achieve this goal the antennas have to be studied in more complex scenarios and new system-oriented metrics have to be used.