Prof. Werner Wiesbeck
Universität Karlsruhe
Germany

Spectrum is presently one of the most valuable goods worldwide as the demand is permanently increasing and it can be traded only locally. Since the United States FCC has opened the spectrum from 3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz, i.e. a bandwidth of 7.5 GHz, for unlicensed use with up to –41.25 dBm/MHz EIRP, numerous applications in communications and sensor areas are showing up. All these applications have in common that they spread the necessary energy over a wide frequency range in this unlicensed band in order to radiate below the limit.

The results are ultra wideband systems. These new devices exhibit especially at the air interface, the antenna, quite surprising behaviors. This talk presents an insight into design, evaluation and measurement procedures for Ultra Wide Band (UWB-) antennas as well as into the characteristics of the UWB radio channel as a whole. UWB antenna basics and principles of wideband radiators, transient antenna characterization and UWB antenna quality measures, derived from the antenna impulse response, are topics. EM simulations and measurements of transient antenna properties in frequency domain and in time domain are included. Different antennas, based on different UWB principles, will be presented. Depending on the interest there are: ridged horn antenna, Vivaldi antenna, logarithmic periodic antenna, mono cone antenna, spiral antenna, aperture coupled bowtie antennas, multimode antennas, sinus antenna and impulse radiating antennas. The channel characterization comprises ray-tracing tools for deterministic indoor UWB channel modeling and measurements. The advantages and drawbacks of the UWB transmission will be discussed, depending on interest. The radiation from different antennas will be demonstrated by movies with a pulse excitation.

Werner Wiesbeck (SM 87, F 94) received the Dipl.-Ing. (M.S.E.E.) and the Dr.-Ing. (Ph.D.E.E.) degrees from the Technical University Munich in 1969 and 1972, respectively. From 1972 to 1983 he was with AEG-Telefunken in various positions including that of head of R&D of the Microwave Division in Flensburg and marketing director Receiver and Direction Finder Division, Ulm. During this period he had product responsibility for mm-wave radars, receivers, direction finders and electronic warfare systems. Since 1983 he has been Director of the Institut für Höchstfrequenztechnik und Elektronik (IHE) at the University of Karlsruhe (TH), where he had been Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering. Research topics include radar, remote sensing, wireless communication and antennas. In 1989 and 1994, respectively, he spent a six months sabbatical at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. He is a member of the IEEE GRS-S AdCom (1992 - 2000), Chairman of the GRS-S Awards Committee (1994 – 1998, 2002 - ), Executive Vice President IEEE GRS-S (1998 - 1999), President IEEE GRS-S (2000 - 2001), Associate Editor IEEE-AP Transactions (1996-1999), past and present Treasurer of the IEEE German Section (1987-1996, 2003-2007). He has been General Chairman of the '88 Heinrich Hertz Centennial Symposium, the '93 Conference on Microwaves and Optics (MIOP '93), the Technical Chairman of International mm-Wave and Infrared Conference 2004 and he has been a member of the scientific committees of many conferences. For the Carl Cranz Series for Scientific Education he serves as a permanent lecturer for radar system engineering, wave propagation and mobile communication network planning. He is a member of an Advisory Committee of the EU - Joint Research Centre (Ispra/Italy), and he is an advisor to the German Research Council (DFG), to the Federal German Ministry for Research (BMBF) and to industry in Germany. He is the recipient of a number of awards, lately the IEEE Millennium Award, the IEEE GRS Distinguished Achievement Award, the Honorary Doctorate (Dr. h.c.) from the University Budapest/Hungary and the Honorary Doctorate (Dr.-Ing. E.h.) from the University Duisburg/Germany. He is a Fellow of IEEE, an Honorary Life Member of IEEE GRS-S, a Member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and a Member of acatech (German Academy of Engineering and Technology).