Impulse radio interactive wireless gaming system and method

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE EMBODIMENTS Overview of the Invention The present invention will now be described more fully in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which the preferred embodiments of the invention are shown.
This invention should not, however, be construed as limited to the embodiments set forth herein; rather, they are provided so this disclosure will be thorough and complete and will fully convey the scope of the invention to those skilled in art.
Like numbers refer to like elements throughout.
Recent advances in communications technology have enabled an emerging, revolutionary ultra wideband technology (UWB) called impulse radio communications systems (hereinafter called impulse radio).
To better understand the benefits of impulse radio to the present invention, the following review of impulse radio follows impulse radio was first fully described in a series of patents, including U.
S.
Pat.
Nos.
4,641,317 (issued Feb.
3, 1987), 4,813,057 (issued Mar.
14, 1989), 4,979,186 (issued Dec.
18, 1990) and 5,363,108 (issued Nov.
8, 1994) to Larry W.
Fullerton.
A second generation of impulse radio patents includes U.
S.
Pat.
Nos.
5,677,927 (issued Oct.
14, 1997), 5,687,169 (issued Nov.
11, 1997) and co-pending Application No.
08/761,602 (filed Dec.
6, 1996) to Fullerton et al.
Uses of impulse radio systems are described in U.
S.
patent application Ser.
No.
09/332,502, entitled, "System and Method for Intrusion Detection using a Time Domain Radar Array" and U.
S.
patent application Ser.
No.
09/332,503, entitled, "Wide Area Time Domain Radar Array" both filed on Jun.
14, 1999 and both of which are assigned to the assignee of the present invention.
These patent documents are incorporated herein by reference.
Impulse Radio Basics Impulse radio refers to a radio system based on short, low duty cycle pulses.
An ideal impulse radio waveform is a short Gaussian monocycle.
As the name suggests, this waveform attempts to approach one cycle of radio frequency (RF) energy at a desired center frequency