Mobile working Toolkit

From Mesh to UWB: Untangling the wireless future

Gary Flood and Sally Whittle ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 16 Apr 2004 12:35 BST

Satellite broadband: Satellite broadband offers DSL-level service for around £60 per month, and is offered in the UK by BT, Tiscali and Aramiska. The advantage of satellite broadband is that you don't need to dig up roads or lay expensive cables. Moreover, although it's nominally a line-of-sight technology, so long as you can see the sky, chances are that you can receive a satellite signal. The technical issues around satellite broadband -- latency and a lack of standards between vendors -- are being addressed and two-way, high-speed services are available with speeds up to 2Mbps.

UWB: In homes and small offices, analysts predict a big future for ultrawideband (UWB), which allows data to be transmitted at a rate of one gigabit per second -- nearly 10 times faster than today's best Wi-Fi connections. Although UWB has a much shorter range -- 30 to 60 feet versus 100 to 200 feet for Wi-Fi -- that could be enough for many uses. For instance, UWB could replace USB (universal serial bus) cords that now connect computers with peripherals such as a keyboard and printer. Businesses could also use UWB to provide fast access to bandwidth hungry applications -- for example, looking up x-rays in hospitals. Overall, the market is expected to grow from zero to nearly six million UWB nodes embedded in various devices by 2007, according to tech consultancy In-Stat/MDR.

WiMax: Fixed wireless access, 802.16, is the technology behind new WiMax services, which will be launched later this year by the likes of Intel. Although fixed wireless access has been around for a few years, WiMax provides a standard for this type of wireless broadband access, and as a result products should be significantly cheaper and more reliable.

How does WiMax work? Imagine a beam of bandwidth that supports data-transmission rates of up to 70 megabits per second within a 30-mile radius of a WiMax antenna. Initially, WiMax will be used by broadband providers -- such as phone companies that offer digital subscriber line (DSL) service -- for last-mile delivery of broadband to consumers' homes. WiMax could potentially extend the reach of broadband to consumers who live too far from the exchange or in remote areas that are not suitable for DSL service.

In the future, WiMax vendors hope that the technology will also be able to communicate with a special chip in wireless devices, along the same lines as today's Centrino chip. The technology would be aimed at mobile workers who want to check email on the road. The combined market for 802.20 (MAN, see above) and WiMax hardware should reach about $1.5bn by 2008, according to ABI Research, a US-based research firm.

WozNet: WozNet is a proprietary wireless access technology developed by Wheels of Zeus, a company started by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple. Wheels of Zeus says that it will release a new product in 2004, called wOzNet. Expected to be resold by Motorola, this specialised hardware will combine Wi-Fi-type access and GPS (global positioning system) technology to offer combined wireless and location-based services, so people can keep track of where their children, elderly relatives, or pets may be.