TI, Intel Led UWB Group to Release Spec

Online staff -- Electronic News, 9/1/2004

The Mulitband OFDM Alliance (MBOA) will use next week's Intel Developers Forum to lay out its roadmap for a new ultra wideband specification.

MBOA is one of two groups vying to get its spec ratified by the IEEE and broadly adopted for the consumer market. The other group is the Ultra Wideband Forum, led by Motorola's subsdiary Freescale and consisting of more than 50 members.

The MBOA claims more than 170 members including Texas Instruments, Intel, Hewlett Packard and Sony among its members.

Next week at IDF, the MBOA will announce the completion of specifications for a physical layer (PHY), and that work is expected to be completed on the specifications for the media access control layer (MAC) by the end of the year.

Specifications will be made available to member companies upon completion, the MBOA said in a statement.

"We have established relations with wireless USB Promoters Group and the WiMedia Alliance to provide the PHY and MAC layers to them, and we expect more to follow," said Stephen Wood, UWB strategist at Intel and MBOA co-founder, in a statement. "What this means for MBOA-SIG companies is that they will be able provide standards-based, high-speed UWB products that will replace the rats' nests of wires that fill their customers' homes and desktops."