Forget e-technology. Welcome to the world of p-technology, which promises to revolutionize the way we communicate in our homes, cars and offices.

In Time Domain’s world, there will be cars with collision avoidance systems that signal a car to brake when it gets too close to another vehicle. Retailers will be able to send signals to potential customers’ cell phones advertising sales as the customer walks by their store. Military and human rights’ groups will be able to detect land mines in fields, saving lives.

The possibilities are endless, according to Ralph Petroff, chief executive officer of the company. "The thing that is so cool is that [the technology] allows you to do entirely different things, he said. "You don’t know what it is going to morph into next."

Rather than using conventional radio waves, p-technology incorporates small radio-signal pulses that are transmitted at extremely low power levels spread across the UWB area of the spectrum using many frequencies at once. Because it is a mixture of so many frequencies, it passes unnoticed through conventional receivers listening for a particular message at a single frequency.

In a time when radio spectrum is becoming scarce due to the government auctioning it off for public and private use, Time Domain sees UWB as a new frontier that could get around the spectrum logjam.

Pulses Chip Away At Golf Problems

Golfers will be among the earliest recipients of advances from radio pulse technology. Want to know more?

The company sees three applications for this technology:

• Communications: It can bring voice and data direct to rural areas and wireless voice data and video transmission inside buildings that other wireless alternatives have trouble penetrating making it less susceptible to fading and interference. (One byproduct of this technology is StealthLink, which could provide private communication with positioning sensors for military and police forces.)
• Geographic positioning: Because the technology can precisely track objects within an inch (centimeter), it can be useful for retailers tracking inventory, and to the military for tracking troop positions.
• Radar: This technology allows the user to see through walls. Conventional radar relies on high-frequency waves that produce fuzzy images. But UWB relies on lower frequency pulses that can penetrate such material as brick and concrete, and the images are much more defined.

Time Domain has developed RadarVision, which can help law enforcement see where criminals are hiding or help rescue teams locate victims under collapsed buildings after an earthquake or fire.

The technology is the brainchild of Larry Fullerton, a former NASA engineer, who now holds several patents for the technology.

Fullerton saw the benefits of the technology early on but never got far until he met the Petroff family, whose venture capital group raised several million dollars to make the technology viable in the marketplace.

Petroff and his brothers, Alan and Mark, cancelled their plans to retire when they caught wind of Fullerton’s invention. "I was so blown away with it," he said. "I felt like a caveman seeing fire for the first time."

The technology's design is etched in high-speed microchips. Devices equipped with these chips could read data and voice at a low frequency. The power emitted by one such device is about 50 microwatts. A cellular phone emits about 600,000 microwatts, over a wider bandwidth.

"The interesting part about the company is that they are doing something unique in terms of commericalizing this product," said Eric Walton, a senior research scientist at Ohio State University’s ElectroScience Lab who has been studying this technology for years.

Though the potential for a wireless revolution is there, Time Domain still has some hurdles to jump.

The agency’s concern is that if enough signals are concentrated in one area, they may interfere with other wireless devices.

Aviation groups in particular are lobbying against the use of UWB saying it could interfere with the Global Positioning System used to navigate airplanes.

"The GPS folks are very concerned about any other forms of emitters because [GPS] is extremely sensitive to interference," Petroff said. "I have sympathy for the GPS signal, but we are trying to complement, not compete with them."

Though the FCC declined to comment on where it stands on the technology, there is one voice within the agency that has vocally endorsed its use.

"Ultra-wide band offers the promise of new radar and imaging services that can save lives. It can rescue hostages, locate disaster victims trapped under [the] rubble of a collapsed building, detect hidden flaws in the construction of highways or airport runways, secure our homes, and maybe even provide high-speed internet access to the classroom," said FCC Commissioner Susan Ness before the 1999 International Ultra-Wideband Conference in Washington, D.C. last year.

The agency is expected to grant the company a "notice of proposed rulemaking" in the next few months, paving the way for an overall endorsement of the technology.

This is good news for Petroff -- a man who, up until a few years ago, was ready to retire and who now has been to Washington, D.C. to meet with agency officials 102 times in the past three and a half years.

"I’m exhausted," he said.