PRESSURED by business and consumer imperatives, an Ultrawideband (UWB) vendor group has bypassed a standards-setting quagmire and struck out in its own, confirming what has been lately increasingly evident: that there will now not be a universal UWB standard.
Consumers will thus be faced with having to choose between two competing common air interfaces.
Last month, the Multi-Band OFDM Alliance (MBOA) announced that it had finalised its physical layer (PHY) 1.0 specification for UWB, the leading contender for the technology behind the emerging IEEE 802.15.3a standard for high-speed, short-range wireless networks. The MBOA, which is strongly aligned to Intel and Texas Instruments, hopes to complete its specification by the end of the year.
The rival vendor group - the UWB Forum - has yet to respond to MBOA’s challenge. Driven to a large part by Motorola and XtremeSpectrum, the UWB Forum is developing a Direct Sequence version of UWB (as opposed to the MBOA’s “frequency hopping” solution).
UWB supporters have been working toward a standard since the US’s Federal Communications Commission allowed its use in February 2002.
At the time of its announcement last month, the MBOA confirmed that it would be progressing its spec without waiting for ratification from the IEEE.
The alliance has voiced its frustration with the IEEE’s formal process of setting standards, with constant delays having bogged down the UWB specification for the past two years.
In defending its decision to proceed on its own, the MBOA cited that many high-volume successful standard products are specified outside of the IEEE - such as the closest wired and wireless predecessors to Wireless USB (Bluetooth and USB).
High-tech market research firm In-Stat/MDR believes that UWB developers will move forward with product rollouts irrespective of the standards’ disputes.
“The stakes are too high with so much R&D and personal executive capital already invested,” stated Joyce Putscher, director of In-Stat/MDR’s converging markets and technologies group.
UWB proponents have also made headway towards providing UWB as the PHY and MAC for the upcoming wireless USB specification, which is expected to help drive UWB into more end products.
The MBOA is working with the WiMedia Alliance, the Wireless USB Promoter Group and the 1394 Trade Association to bring products to market in 2005. Application targets range from Wireless USB and Wireless 1394 for PCs, printers and other peripherals, to streaming video for PVRs and displays, as well as high-speed IP connections via the WiMedia WiNet PAL.
In principle, both vendor groups support developing a single standard that allows compliant UWB devices to use either DS-UWB or MB-OFDM, yet still allows all compliant devices to interoperate and coordinate their use of the shared UWB spectrum.