Ultra-wideband (UWB) transmission has recently received increased attention in both academia and industry for applications in wireless communications. It is among CNN's top 10 technologies to watch in 2004. UWB has many benefits, including high data rate, availability of low-cost transceivers, low transmit power, and low interference. It operates with emission levels commensurate with common digital devices such as laptops, palm pilots and pocket calculators. The approval of UWB technology made by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) of the United States in 2002 reserves the unlicensed frequency band between 3.1 to 10.6 GHz (7.5GHz) for indoor UWB wireless communication systems. It is expected that many conventional principles and approaches used for indoor wireless communications may be re-evaluated, and a new industrial sector in short range (e.g., 10 meters) wireless communications with high data rate (e.g., 400Mbps) may be achieved. For instance, industrial standards such as IEEE 802.15.3a (high data rate) and IEEE 802.15.4a (very low data rate) have been introduced based on UWB technology. Although R&D efforts in recent years have demonstrated that UWB radio is a promising solution for high-rate short-range wireless communications, further extensive investigation, experimentation and development are necessary towards developing effective and efficient UWB communication systems. This issue will focus on the results from cutting edge research and state-of-the-art technology in UWB wireless communications. It will be very timely and valuable for future UWB research and strategy activities. The submitted papers should deal with state-of-the-art design and analysis, implementation and experimental results of all aspects of UWB wireless communications systems. In this context, topics include, but are not limited to:

• Radio propagation and large scale variations
• Pulse propagation and deterministic channel modeling
• Monocylces
• Algorithms and signal processing
• Antennas design
• Modulation, detection, and receiver structure (pulsed UWB, multiband OFDM modulation)
• UWB MIMO
• UWB standards including IEEE 802.15.3a and IEEE 802.15.4a
• Multiple access
• Synchronization and tracking
• Interference and co-existence with other systems including IEEE 802.11 and 3G/3.5G/4G
• RF subsystems
• System design, implementation, and performance
• Ad Hoc networks and other radio applications
• Security issues
• Case studies

Original, unpublished contributions will be considered for the issue. The paper should be formatted to print on either A4 or letter paper, and no longer than 20 double-spaced pages, excluding illustrations and graphs. Authors wishing to submit papers should send an electronic version (postscript or PDF files ONLY) with a separate cover letter, which contains the paper title, authors with affiliations, and a 200-word abstract, to one of the Guest Editors:

Xuemin (Sherman) Shen, University of Waterloo, Canada, xshen@bbcr.uwaterloo.ca
Mohsen Guizani, Western Michigan University, USA, mguizani@cs.wmich.edu
Hsiao-Hwa Chen, National Sun-Yat Sen University, Taiwan, hshwchen@mail.nsysu.edu.tw
Robert Caiming Qiu, Tennessee Technological University, USA, rqiu@tntech.edu
Andreas F. Molish, Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, MA, USA and Lund University Sweden, Andreas.Molish@ieee.org

If the electronic submission is impossible, please submit SIX hardcopies of the paper to the following address:

Professor Xuemin (Sherman) Shen
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
Email: xshen@bbcr.uwaterloo.ca
Tel: (519) 888-4567 ext. 2691, Fax: (519) 746-3077