Coexistence Niche of Ultra-Wideband and Wi-Fi: Suspected Spurious Signal Reception in Channel 5

Abstract

Introducing Wi-Fi 6E and the emerging Wi-Fi 7 has raised significant questions about the coexistence of Ultra-Wideband (UWB) systems operating in the 6 GHz frequency band. The research in this field has mainly focused on the impact of Wi-Fi on UWB communication and the range of their simultaneous operation. Prior studies have highlighted the destructive effects of Wi-Fi on UWB communication in this band, including the false detection of UWB frames while ongoing UWB transmission. However, to our knowledge, no studies have focused exclusively on the impact of Wi-Fi signals solely on UWB receivers’ behavior in isolation. This paper addresses this gap by presenting results obtained under controlled conditions in an anechoic chamber, where external interference is eliminated. Using a setup with only a DW1000 UWB receiver (DWM1001-DEV) and a Wi-Fi 6E access point (Netgear RAXE500) transmitting standard beacon frames and then traffic emulated by iperf tool it was observed that UWB reception can be influenced even without ongoing active UWB transmissions. On top of that, some of these dropped UWB packets (false negatives) showed signs of good CRC checks (false positives). These findings provide a foundation for further exploration, particularly with both legacy and newer UWB chips to confirm or disprove the implications hereby presented.