Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Future rosy for UltraWideBand

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 2004 09:17:04 -0500

Future rosy for UltraWideBand
By Faultline

Posted: 25/02/2004 at 10:34 GMT

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UltraWideBand's prospects for becoming the dominant wireless technology
for the home improved significantly this week, with Motorola poised to
support a coexistence protocol that bridges the two rival would-be
standards, and Intel demonstrating integration with wired USB.

The main brake on the adoption of UWB, which can achieve data rates of
up to 440Mbps over 10 meters, has been the failure of the IEEE to settle
on one of two alternatives - Motorola and the Intel/TI-led Multiband
OFDM Alliance - to provide its 802.15.3a personal area networking
standard. Start-up Pulse~Link has come up with a compromise that at
least allows products incorporating the different UWB technologies to
coexist peacefully, if not to interoperate. It seems that Motorola will
offer that technology as an olive branch to its competitor.

Common Signalling Protocol
Unlike the MBOA, which was the front runner in the IEEE race and still
believes it could provide the only standard, Motorola accepts that it is
unlikely to be the exclusive UWB arbiter. While the market decides, and
tests continue to probe Motorola's claims that the MBOA solution causes
unacceptable interference, the giant will back Pulse~Link's Common
Signalling Protocol as an interim solution. It will propose the physical
layer technology at an ad hoc IEEE meeting in San Diego next Monday and
expects to get support from Panasonic, Sharp, Sony and others.

Motorola also showed off its own UWB chipset, the first fruits of its
acquisition last year of XtremeSpectrum, at the ISSC chip conference
this week. Unlike other UWB silicon, this three-chip product is actually
sampling now and will be fully available around midyear. Raj
Sengottaiyan, Motorola's vice president of engineering at the
semiconductor unit, was one of the most bullish speakers at the ISSC
conference. The forum's general attitude to UWB was cautious, with many
experts pointing to lack of standards, unproven or inconsistent data
rates and the persistent issue of interference.

The Motorola chipset includes a baseband processor, a media access
controller (MAC) with a 1394 interface, and the physical layer (PHY). It
promises a 114Mbps data rate, and there is also the potential for a
slower 57Mbps mode that would guarantee higher data integrity.

UWB silicon
Meanwhile, at its Developer Forum, Intel was demonstrating its first UWB
silicon - based on the MBOA specifications - and aiming to set yet
another standard for the digital home market where its chief ambitions
lie in 2004. This would be a combined UWB and USB I/O architecture for
fast multimedia interconnects between consumer electronics gear. This
comes with the inevitable industry alliance of supporting vendors to
promote and certify the technology and give it the outer veneer of a
real standard, containing many of the companies involved in the USB 2.0
wired technology.

The Wireless USB specification will support data rates of 480Mbps over
four meters and 110Mbps over 10 meters, including new streaming
enhancements recently added to wired USB 2.0. Intel says it could be the
first multimedia interconnect to be backed by the whole spectrum of
electronics suppliers from PC makers to consumer media devices and
digital cameras.

Ubiquitous standard
The new specification will be based on the MBOA's UWB technology, and is
seen as another way that the Alliance plans to ensure that its approach
to fast wireless becomes ubiquitous. It will take the form of a USB
platform adaptation layer running on top of the UWB silicon, and there
will also be a variant for 1394 Firewire. Eventually, a third layer will
be designed in, optimised for quality of service for multimedia IP
traffic.

The spec will also support the radio platform defined by the WiMedia
Alliance, which is dedicated to interoperability among all IEEE 802.15.3
wireless personal area networking standards. These include UWB and the
original 802.15.3, which transfers data at 55Mbps in the 2.4GHz band.
Intel is expected to join this industry group shortly, and the Alliance
is widely predicted to become a key supporter of the MBOA technologies,
in effect taking the role for that protocol that the Wi-Fi Alliance does
for 802.11x.

Systems using Wireless USB should ship in early 2005. The technology
will be at loggerheads with another current development - USB On-The-Go
- a wireless version that uses USB 1.2 extensions to transfer data
between devices in a peer-to-peer fashion.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/69/35813.html
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