UWB Medium Access With Assistance of Pilot Narrow Band Radio

Ultra-wideband (UWB) is of inherent superiorities on high precision ranging, radar, and short-range high-data-rate communications. Numerous academic studies as well as industrial developments focusing on UWB have been made in the past years. A remarkable step in UWB commercialization is that UWB was implemented into Apple's smartphone for the first time in 2019. Since then, more and more wireless devices including various smartphones and smart watches have been installing UWB to expand utilities. It is reasonable to imagine that interference among UWB devices must be dealt with as the number of UWB devices keeps increasing. However, legacy medium access method based on clear channel assessment (CCA) is difficult for UWB. To facilitate coexistence among UWB devices, we propose a UWB medium access method with assistance of pilot narrow band radio. Coupled operation and MAC procedure of the proposed method are illustrated in detail in the paper. Moreover, we present an example of 920 MHz band following radio regulation in Japan. The presented spectrum is suitable to the role of pilot narrow band radio for assisting UWB medium access, which is explained by designing relevant patterns to associate with UWB. The advantage of using pilot narrow band radio is confirmed through comparison of receiving power calculation between UWB and narrow band radio.