FCC Wraps Up Ultra-Long Ultra-Wideband Proceeding

After 12 years, the Federal Communications Commission has closed out one of the longest and most contentious rulemakings in recent memory. Ultra-wideband was bound to be controversial from the start. The basic idea consists of spreading a low-level signal across a very wide swath of spectrum, often a gigahertz or more. In principle, the level at any one frequency is too low to interfere with conventional spectrum users, but the power adds up across the wide bandwidth into a useful signal. The FCC expected two main kinds of uses: data transmission, which can reach hundreds of megabits per second over short distances, and a variety of imaging and radar applications.