The information that one finds in the standards and specifications of a technology are frequently only part of the story. While standardization is critical to achieve industry-wide interoperability, it is also very important for individual manufacturers to be able to differentiate their products. For this reason, standardization bodies generally restrict themselves to describing those elements that are absolutely required to establish interoperability or common customer experience and usually remain silent about the rest of a design.

In the case of UWB, there are several points that are not described in the standards, but which one might wish to be aware of. For instance, there are many cases in which it will be necessary to place a UWB radio alongside one or more other radios as part of a general system. Some effort is required to get these devices to co-exist. There are also trade-offs that a designer will need to make on topics such as the level of integration that is desirable, the chip-packaging trade-offs and the antenna-selection options. Each of these issues is discussed in the sections which follow.

Co-location with other radios on the same platform

Because it is a wireless technology, UWB is subject to more scrutiny in terms of interference – including its effects on neighbouring devices as well as their effects on it. This is to reduce negative effects both to other UWB receivers and non-UWB receivers.