The U.S. Army Research Lab has awarded an engineering team at the University of Texas at Austin a $909,000 grant to develop a model for a wireless Ultra Wideband (UWB) device that could transmit libraries of information each second over short distances.

"Imagine if you could beam entire contents of manuals or entire hard drives worth of information over the air," said Theodore S. Rappaport, director of the university's Wireless Network and Communications Group (WNCG). "The idea is to make lighter-weight, much more rugged and less expensive devices than laptops that allow for transmitting massive amounts of content."

Content-Carrying Capacity

Rappaport and his team will focus on developing devices that can transmit data even at rates much faster than UWB for use between military personnel in a combat unit or even coworkers in an office suite.

The research team will use the Army funding to purchase expensive radio-frequency test equipment, wafer-probe stations and computer software for designing and testing components of the wireless devices. The team also will use the funding to provide partial salaries for himself and five other researchers.

Rappaport compared the final product's potential to that of electronic notepads that have extraordinary content-carrying capacity and would be readily accessible on someone's computer desktop.

"These wireless devices will be able to transmit things at such a fast data rate, it'll virtually be like you're carrying your entire life's memory content from your home and office with you," he said.

Experimental Design

Rappaport said the broadband chip, when finalized, will be smaller than a fingernail and will require tiny radio antennae. The prototype's main components will include a radio-signal transmitter, a receiver and several integrated circuits for handling information storage and retrieval.

Researchers said UWB's radio frequency is so high that outside limits for engineering design rules are not well understood just yet. "It's an unknown how different electrical elements will perform when they're fabricated, so we have to learn by simulation, fabrication and by trial and error how to design for these higher frequencies with silicon chips."

Rappaport predicted that if the miniaturization of semiconductors proceeds as expected, a semiconductor manufacturer could put the device into production in about five years using microprocessors with components as small as 42 nanometers or 65 nanometers.

He said the anticipated cost would be $5 for a single chip and integrated transceiver with the ability to transmit data a distance of about 16.4 feet.