Ultrawideband (UWB) chipset sales will grow at an average 400 percent compound annual growth rate between 2005 and 2008 according to analysts In-Stat/MDR, despite significant wrangling delays in the formalisation of the associated IEEE 802.15.3a standard.
UWB allows data to be wirelessly and rapidly transmitted at speeds of up to 480 Mbit/s over short distances between electronic equipment in the home or office, for example, between TVs and digital video players, or between laptop PCs and conference room projectors.
UWB proponents position it as the wireless technology that can deliver the bandwidth and service quality that many consumer electronics companies need and Wi-Fi cannot deliver – particularly for wireless streaming video transfer.
The first products based on UWB are expected to arrive in 2005. In-Stat/MDR says these will almost certainly be based on proprietary chipsets from vendors such as Freescale and General Atomics that have decided to launch products early to bridge the delay gap caused by a significant amount of political wrangling over the formalisation of the UWB IEEE standard. Initial UWB implementations will be primarily focused on point-to-point connections between devices, with point-to-multipoint following later.
The eventual adoption of UWB may, however, be accelerated by the fact that the PHY and MAC for the upcoming wireless USB specification will be based on it. Moreover, In-Stat/MDR predicts that as UWB itself rolls out, it faces no serious competing technologies, since alternatives only offer slower ways of accomplishing data transfers, with speeds that offer only 1 to 10 percent the speed of a UWB solution.