UWB products to debut despite standards stalemate
Published: 06 Jan 2005 10:00 GMT
Ultrawideband-enabled products will debut at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, despite the longstanding controversy over approving a standard.
Prototypes of cell phones, high-definition televisions, laptops and wireless access points using UWB, as ultrawideband is more commonly known, should be available commercially by the end of 2005, the manufacturers say.
Freescale Semiconductor, formerly a Motorola unit, and chipmaker Intel are backing competing incompatible blueprints for UWB. But neither side's proposals have gathered enough support from Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers members to be designated the standard. The IEEE subcommittee developing the UWB standard is expected to meet by the end of the month to try it again, but no one is expecting a breakthrough.
Unlike wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, 802.11b and 802.11a, which work in relatively narrow bandwidths, UWB operates over a wide range of frequency bands simultaneously by sending very broad but very low-power pulses. It is capable of delivering wire-level performance, making it suitable for devices that require higher data transfer speeds. For instance, media players with 1Gbps UWB capability - speeds already demonstrated - could transfer an entire movie in MPEG-4 format in a few seconds. UWB also uses much less power and has the potential to be considerably cheaper than existing wireless networks, making it particularly attractive in portable devices with large data capacities.
But the release of products before a standard is clearly defined threatens to litter stores with incompatible products and stall the industry's development. However, history is strewn with products that debut sometimes years ahead of standard approval, according to Diane Orr, a spokeswoman for Freescale, whose UWB silicon is at the heart of the products being unveiled at the show, which starts on Thursday.
Intel expects to see standards-based UWB products in late 2005 or early 2006, said spokeswoman Kari Skoog. "While there will be proprietary UWB implementations now and in the near future, it will take a few more months for all of the work to be completed to provide customers with a simple, effective and standards-based solution," Skoog added. "We believe that pre-standard products introduced now will generally be restricted to niche applications."
Freescale's Orr said said there was no time like the present.
"We think there's no danger," she said. "Even if there was a standard today, that wouldn't necessarily change what the market is doing."
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