The 3-day (24-26 Sep) 2007 IEEE Conference of Ultra Wideband (ICUWB), held for the first time in Singapore, has just concluded successfully. The conference ushers Singapore into the UWB era. In conjunction to the conference, the Singapore Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) announced that it would allotted the 3,400- to 10,600-MHz spectrum bands and set an emissions cap of -70 dBm/MHz for most UWB applications. Any devices complying with the technical and emission standards would be exempt from licensing requirements (Ref). This move would likely spur the early adoption and commercialization of UWB applications in Singapore. According to market analyst IMS Research, UWB is forecast to penetrate the market in low volume in 2007 and rise to a penetration rate of around 20% by 2011. By 2010, more than 120 million phones will be equipped with UWB. Why? because UWB is superior in high-speed data transmission for multimedia applications to mobile phones. It consumes very low power compared to other wireless technologies. It is the most promising techniques for short-range, high data rate wireless applications such as wireless USB, audio/video streaming, and cable replacement.

The Singapore Institute of Microelectronics (IME) has been very active in UWB R&D for the last couple of years. The IME researchers are also amongst the world’s first to develop a CMOS dual-band UWB transceiver which supports both the 3-5 GHz and the 6-10 GHz (Ref). I believe the proliferation of UWB commercialization will also drive the local RFIC research since RFIC is the enabling technology for UWB. Below is the video clip on UWB in CES 2007.