AbstractUltra‐wideband (UWB) communication techniques have attracted a great interest in both academia and industry in the past few years for applications in short‐range wireless mobile systems. This is due to the potential advantages of UWB transmissions such as low power, high rate, immunity to multipath propagation, less complex transceiver hardware, and low interference. However, tremendous R&D efforts are required to face various technical challenges in developing UWB wireless systems, including UWB channel characterization, transceiver design, coexistence and interworking with other narrowband wireless systems, design of the link and network layers to benefit from UWB transmission characteristics. This paper is to provide an overview of UWB communications, summarize the previous research results, and identify further research issues that need to be tackled. The emphasis is placed on the commercial wireless communications. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.