News and New Products

UWB chip-set maker preps rollout of consumer products

By Maury Wright -- EDN, 12/22/2005

You’ve been hearing about UWB (ultrawideband) technology for seemingly a decade while waiting for products to appear. Most pundits blame the standards impasse in the IEEE 802.15 committee. However, Matthew Shoemake, president and chief executive officer of start-up WiQuest, disagrees. Shoemake claims that it’s simply taken a couple of years for the WiMedia group to finish a spec and for semiconductor companies to, in turn, deliver products. Shoemake doesn’t seem bothered a bit by the lack of an industry standard or that the rival UWB Forum (www.uwbforum.org) group is headed down a different path, as his company launches the Gigabit WQST110 baseband and PHY (physical)-layer chip.

WiQuest joins Alereon (www.alereon.com), which launched a WiMedia chip in October 2005 (see “Chip family offers WiMedia/UWB compliance.") with products that can enable applications such as UWB printers, cameras, and media players. The WiQuest differentiator comes in the fact that it offers a 1-Gbps data rate. The WiMedia spec defines a maximum rate of 480 Mbps. Shoemake claims that the WiQuest offering will maintain compatibility with other WiMedia chips and offer significantly higher performance when two WiQuest-based products connect on a UWB network.

He argues that the speed provides the reason for UWB to exist. The Gigabit rates provide a reason for product designers to use UWB either in place of or alongside 802.11 chips that feature much longer range—and certainly instead of UWB Forum technology that, according to Shoemake, will be limited to rates of approximately 100 Mbps.

The company pledges to have consumer products on shelves by the third quarter. Samples of the chips and a $15,000 development kit are now available. WiQuest claims the BOM (bill-of-materials) cost for an add-on UWB module for a PC will be approximately $20 (medium volumes).

WiQuest Communications, www.wiquest.com.