International audienceIn this paper, we propose a spread spectrum multi-carrier multiple-access (SS-MC-MA) waveform for high data rate UWB applications, taking into consideration the European UWB context. This new UWB scheme respects the parameters of the multiband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB-OFDM) technique which is one of the candidates for wireless personal area networks (WPAN) standardization. We optimize the spreading code length and the number of codes in our proposed scheme in order to maximize the system range for a given target throughput. Furthermore, we dynamically distribute the time-frequency codes that provide frequency hopping between users in order to improve our system range. We show that our adaptive system transmits information at much higher attenuation levels and with larger throughput than the ones of the MB-OFDM proposal. Hence, we conclude that our proposed system can be advantageously exploited for UWB applications
