The propagation of ultrawideband (UWB) signals in indoor environments is an important issue with significant impacts on the future direction and scope of UWB technology. The propagation of UWB signals is governed, among other things, by the properties of materials in the propagation medium. The information on electromagnetic properties of construction materials in the UWB frequency range would provide valuable insights into the appreciation of the capabilities and limitations of UWB technology. Although electromagnetic properties of certain construction materials over relatively narrow bandwidths in GHz frequency ranges are available, ultrawideband characterisation of most typical construction materials for UWB communication purposes has not been reported. In narrowband wireless communications, only the magnitude of insertion loss has been the quantity of interest. But for UWB signals, in addition to the magnitude, the phase information is an equally important factor that needs to be accounted for. In fact, UWB signals not only suffer attenuation when propagating through walls, but also suffer distortion due to the dispersive properties of the walls. This research examines propagation through typical construction materials and their ultrawideband characterisation. Ten commonly used construction materials are chosen for this investigation. Results for the dielectric constant and loss tangent of the materials over the UWB frequency range are presented. Accuracy of the measured results is discussed and distortions of UWB signals due to the dispersive properties of wall materials are addressed.

The propagation of ultra wideband (UWB) signals in indoor environments is an important issue with significant impacts on the future direction and scope of the UWB technology and its applications. The objective of this work is to obtain a better assessment of the potentials of UWB indoor communications by characterizing the UWB indoor communication channels. Channel characterization refers to extracting the channel parameters from measured data. An indoor UWB measurement campaign is undertaken. Time-domain indoor propagation measurements using pulses with less than 100 ps width are carried out. Typical indoor scenarios, including line-of-sight (LOS), non-line-of-sight (NLOS), room-to-room, within-the-room, and hallways, are considered. Results for indoor propagation measurements are presented for local power delay profiles (local PDP) and small-scale averaged power delay profiles (SSA-PDP). Site-specific trends and general observations are discussed. The results for path-loss exponent and time dispersion parameters are presented.

Preliminary experimental investigations on the application of UWB electromagnetic signals for through-wall detection are presented. Measurements are conducted using pulses with a full-width half-maximum (FWHM) nearly equal to 85 ps. This corresponds to a spatial resolution of about 26 mm. A simple signal processing approach is also introduced to extract the target image from the reflected fields.

Perfect electromagnetic conductor (PEMC) is a novel concept in electromagnetic fields of interesting properties and many potential applications. This paper introduces a new technique to design an artificial surface that has equivalent PEMC properties. The proposed PEMC boundary is based on a periodic structure composed of two conducting patches on a grounded dielectric slab. One of them is embedded inside the substrate and the other lies on the surface of the substrate. A conducting via is used to connect the two patches. In the resulting PEMC boundary, the polarization of the reflected wave is controlled by the tilting angle between the two patches.