Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Unified PHY scheme takes shape

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2004 14:20:17 -0500

Unified PHY scheme takes shape
By Patrick Mannion
EE Times
Mar 01, 2004

MANHASSET, N.Y. — The IEEE 802.15.3a
task group took two days last week to sketch
out a framework under which the two remaining
physical layers for ultrawideband short-range
wireless communications —
currently deadlocked — can coexist
peacefully.

The Common Signaling Mode, now being
prepped for formal presentation to the IEEE
at the group's next official meeting in March,
will enable a dual-PHY approach while laying
the foundation for the coexistence and
interoperability of future UWB
implementations.

But there's a snag. Namely, the complete absence of one side in the
802.15.3a debate. Though attended by more than 20 representatives of
various groups, including some backing Motorola Inc.'s direct-sequence
UWB proposal, there was no one from the MultiBand OFDM Alliance (MBOA).
Led by Intel Corp.  and Texas Instruments Inc., the MBOA plans to
formalize its own UWB proposal as an industry standard.

"We're still leaving the door open to the MBOA to contribute," said John
Santhoff, chief technology officer of PulseLink, which hosted last
week's meeting at its facility in Carlsbad, Calif. "But they don't
consider that there might be anything besides an MBOA PHY " in any shape
or form " and that's just naive thinking."

PulseLink is not directly involved in work for the 802.15.3a task group.
Nonetheless, Santhoff believes some form of built-in coexistence and
interoperability scheme is essential if one UWB radio is to be prevented
from knocking out another co-located UWB radio, regardless of the
application.

"AetherWire, Time Domain, General Atomics, Artimi and Motorola
themselves all have PHYs separate from the MBOA " and all are
intending to go to market with them," said John Barr, director of
Standards Realization at Motorola and chairman of the 802.15.3 task
group

The frustration cuts both ways. "There's no saints here," said Bob
Heile, chairman of 15.3a. "But what PulseLink is trying to do goes well
beyond the TG3a debate. While it does [attempt to] enable a dual-PHY
approach for TG3a, it's really about making sure that current and future
PHYs can coexist. There's no doubt that there are other PHYs out there,
and more will come."
One analyst said that the effort may be premature. "Even if we have two
PHYs, how likely is it we'll see interference, given the short ranges?"
said Craig Mathias, principal of Farpoint Group. "It's really not a
problem that has to be solved right now. The only reason they did this
is to get to a standards resolution more quickly."

The primary requirements of the Common Signaling Mode are that it must
allow both direct-sequence-UWB and MBOA radios to communicate with one
another and to be implementable by both radios with minimum additional
circuitry. "We estimate it'll add only 100 gates " at the most," said
Barr.

The scheme outlines a relatively low-rate (10-Mbit/second), 500-MHz
channel centered at 3.9 GHz, which is a band common to both DS-UWB and
MBOA. The 500-MHz-wide signal would use binary phase-shift keying or
differential PSK. According to Barr, the group took pains to ensure the
signal would match the capabilities of both the MBOA and DS-UWB radio.

http://www.commsdesign.com/news/market_news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=18201209

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