No Standard for UWB
By Suzanne Deffree -- EDN, January 19, 2006
The towel has been thrown in on an IEEE ultra wideband (UWB) standard.
After three years of dispute, the IEEE task group responsible for UWB, 802.15.3a, has decided to disband in a near unanimous vote.
The two UWB camps, direct sequence-UWB backer UWB Forum and MultiBand Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing UWB supporter WiMedia Alliance, said in a joint statement today that they will continue to move UWB into the market and concur that, at this stage in UWB market development, “a more prudent course of action is necessary to allow the market to move forward with the commercialization of multiple UWB technologies."
That does not mean competition between the two decidedly different UWB flavors will lessen, however. UWB – a short-range personal area network technology that allows high speed sends, mainly targeting video – is expected to have a strong presence in the wireless market as the connected home continues to form. Major semiconductor players in consumer electronics, like Intel and Texas Instruments, have come out in support of technology.
"The vote to kill the IEEE 802.15.3a UWB standards effort was one of irony,” stated Eric Broockman, CEO of Alereon, a WiMedia UWB player. “After more than two and a half years of discussions without a decision being reached, the IEEE has unanimously voted to kill the 802.15.3a proposed standard and quit wasting everyone's time.
"This is a triumph for UWB companies, like Alereon, but even more so for consumers. With the battle line drawn between the two standards camps, we will now be able to totally focus our energy on creating products that are useful and beneficial to consumers, ultimately allowing the market to determine the technologies they find most convenient and useful. We believe that certified wireless USB using the WiMedia common platform is what customers want. This should be an interesting battle to watch."
Disputed Martin Rofheart, director of UWB Operations at UWB Forum member company Freescale: "Ideally IEEE would have created specifications for a MB-OFDM solution and a DS-UWB solution that industry groups could pull from as they would any other components.
“While it is unfortunate that this did not happen, we believe meaningful standards are ultimately made by the market,” he continued. “While WiMedia has focused on delivering a completely new wireless solution called 'Certified Wireless USB,' Freescale has launched our Cable-Free initiative focused on leveraging the installed base of wired connectivity standards based on USB, 1394, and others. The fact that Freescale partners such as Belkin, who themselves own over half the worldwide USB cable business, have announced product based on our Cable-Free USB is testament to the validity of our approach."
USB is the second connectivity technology to be paired with UWB. It comes on the heels of efforts by industry players to marry the technology to Bluetooth, which, ironically followed a similar path to customers that UWB has now been set on.
“Bluetooth technology was brought to fruition in much the same way -- independent groups worked to create competing standards solutions and the market decided which version was the strongest and most likely to support innovation and consumer buy-in," Broockman said.
