Graduation date: 2006Ultra-wideband (UWB) radio is the transmission of data using an extremely wide bandwidth and very low power spectral density. In this thesis, the mereits and challenges of UWB architectures versus conventional narrowband architectures will be compared. Pulsed UWB systems can be implemented with very simple architectures. These advantages make UWB well suited for short range, battery powered applications where a high bit rate is still needed. A prototype transceiver for a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag has been developed and its implementation and performance will be discussed. The prototype is used to demonstrate the feasibility of a pulsed UWB architecture and illustrate the advantages of UWB targeted to this application. The design will be covered from architectural choices, component selection, PCB design through lab experiments and optimization.