UWB Higher Layers

The design of a communication network has been traditionally subdivided into a hierarchy of levels or layers. At the top of the hierarchy, the application layer defines the high-level services to be supported by the network. These services are subdivided into classes of services at the network layer, each class having different requirements, for instance in terms of quality of service (QoS). Following a layered approach, communication networks have not been designed from scratch in a principled way to optimize global system properties. The traditional design of a communication network has rarely been able in fact to focus on the optimization of global system properties. By creating a new physical layer, UWB offers unique opportunities for the principled design of new classes of communications networks based on the optimization of complex trade-offs between use of resources, quality of service, costs and other relevant parameters.