Within many applications impulse radio based ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) transmission offers significant benefits for very short range high data rate communications when compared with existing standards and protocols. In many of these applications the main design goals are very low power consumption and very low complexity design for easy integration and cost reduction. Digitally programmable IR-UWB transmitters using an on-off keying modulation scheme on a 0.13 microns CMOS process operating on 1.2V supply and yielding power consumption as low as 0.9 mW at a 10 Mbps data rate with dynamic power control are enabled. The IR-UWB transmitters support new frequency hopping techniques providing more efficient spectrum usage and dynamic allocation of the spectrum when transmitting in highly congested frequency bands. Biphasic scrambling is also introduced for spectral line reduction. Additionally, an energy detection receiver for IR-UWB is presented to similarly meet these design goals whilst being adaptable to address IR-UWB transmitter specificity.