SBIR Phase I: Universal Home Network Based on Ultrawide Band Technology

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project seeks to develop an innovative wireless network infrastructure for residential homes that can integrate Internet, data communication, telephony, home automation, audio, and video. This infrastructure is called "Universal Home Network"(UHN). The backbone of UHN is the emerging Time-Modulated Ultrawide Band (TM-UWB) radio technology. TM-UWB is a radio communication method that sends pulses of RF energy instead of sine waves. These pulses that enable precise ranging, operate in multi-path environments, and more easily penetrate indoor obstructions. The average RF transmit power of these pulses is below the noise floor, allowing UHN to perform tracking and data communication while coexisting with existing RF systems. TM-UWB radios only transmit pulses with 0.1% duty cycle, so they consume very little power. Pulses in the time domain have a bandwidth of more than 2 GHz, so TM-UWB signal is very difficult to intercept and jam. UHN may achieve a bandwidth of more than 100Mbps using multiple channels. The brain of HUN is the HUN Home Server, which is a dedicated real-time computer managing, sharing, routing, storage, and processing voice, video, data, and control commands coming in and out of the house. The Home Networking market is growing rapidly, because of the declining price of computers, increasing number of homes with multiple PCs, and Internet access. There are also an increasing number of digital devices used in the home, with a prevalence of multimedia content. Park Associates anticipates that computer-and entertainment-based networks alone will exceed $4 billions in five years. Existing home network technologies can only meet parts of the interconnection needs of homeowners. The proposed UHN is designed to carry data, voice, audio/video, and home automation messages in a unified infrastructure. Intelligent Automation Inc.'s near term commercialization plan is to provide interfaces between UHN and other existing protocols to speed up the acceptance of UHN by consumers and industries. The long term plan is to partner with consumer electronics, appliance, and home automation manufactures to design and sell products with native UHN interface.