As wireless communication systems are making the transition from wireless telephony to interactive internet data and multi-media types of applications, the desire for high data rate as well as low data rate transmission is increasing tremendously. As more and more devices go wireless, future technologies will face spectral crowding and coexistence of wireless devices will be a major issue. Considering the limited bandwidth availability, accommodating the demand for higher capacity and data rates is a challenging task, requiring innovative technologies that can coexist with devices operating at various frequency bands. UWB, which has been considered primarily for use with radar applications in the past, offers attractive solutions for many wireless communication areas, including wireless personal area networks (WPANs), wireless telemetry and telemedecine, and wireless sensors networks. With its wide bandwidth, UWB offers a capacity much higher than the current narrowband systems. Other benefits of UWB include immunity to multi-path effects, high resolution (sub-decimeter range), robustness against eavesdropping, simple and inexpensive transceiver circuitry, and easier material penetration.

In spite of all the advantages of UWB, there are many fundamental and practical issues that need to be studied carefully to ensure the success of the technology in the wireless communication market. Multi-access code design, multiple access interference (MAI) cancellation, narrowband interference (NBI) detection and cancellation, synchronization of the receiver to extremely narrow pulses, accurate modeling of UWB channels, estimation of multipath channel delays and coefficients, adaptive transceiver design are some of the issues that still require a lot of research. In addition to these physical layer issues, the fundamental role of UWB technology in wireless networks is still open and a wide range of research questions continue to present challenges. Especially, the role of the UWB in wireless ad-hoc and sensors networks requires significant amount of research. This special issue is aimed to address some of these issues and encourage researchers to publish their outcomes and results in WCMC journal. The special issue is aimed to assemble both original research papers and review articles that address these questions, and enhance the state-of-the-art UWB systems. Papers on practical as well as on theoretical topics and problems are invited. Suggested topics include (but are not limited to):

PAPER SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Papers may be submitted electronically (Postscript or PDF files only) to both Prof. Hüseyin Arslan (arslan@eng.usf.edu) and Dr. Zafer Sahinoglu (zafer@merl.com). Authors are also requested to submit a separate cover letter via email, which contains the paper title, the authors’ names and affiliations, and a 200 word abstract.

IMPORTANT DATES

Nov. 20, 2004		Manuscript submission deadline:
Jan. 1, 2005		Notification of acceptance
Feb. 1, 2005		Final Manuscript Due
July, 2005		Publication of special issue

GUEST EDITORS Huseyin Arslan Dept. of Electrical Engineering University of South Florida 4202 E. Fowler Ave., ENB118 Tampa, Fl, 33620 arslan@eng.usf.edu				Zafer Sahinoglu Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs 201 Broadway, cambridge MA 02139 zafer@merl.com