As one of the three founding members of the WiMedia Alliance (along with Kodak and Motorola) and the longest serving board member, Alereon is pleased with the announcement that the WiMedia Alliance is transferring its UWB specification(s) to the Bluetooth SIG and to the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF). When the WiMedia Alliance was formed, its purpose was to promote Wireless MultiMedia using UltraWideBand (UWB) technology, which is fundamentally a revolutionary form of radio communications. Over the last six years the WiMedia Alliance has had many successes and has made substantial progress. In spite of the stymied efforts and the ultimate collapse of the IEEE standards process, WiMedia was ultimately successful in making the WiMedia specification an internationally recognized, UN sanctioned, ISO standard through the ECMA standards body. Further, the WiMedia Alliance was successful in achieving recognition of the UWB spectrum in the USA, the EU countries, Japan, China and Korea. Most importantly, WiMedia’s ambitious vision has been to quickly and efficiently eliminate existing cables to enable a Life Without Wires™. To accomplish this, the WiMedia Alliance implemented a “common radio platform” strategy to enable a single UWB chip to be capable of supporting applications for 1) the installed base of familiar USB products (now called Certified Wireless USB), and/or 2) Bluetooth for mobile Personal Area Networks (PANs) and/or 3) TCP/IP for future applications.
In 2004, the USB-IF adopted the WiMedia specification, which was followed by the Bluetooth SIG’s adoption of WiMedia in May 2005 [subject to the proviso that at least three WiMedia silicon providers be capable of supporting the UWB frequencies above 6GHz]. Alereon was the first company to sample a chip that operated above 6Ghz with a product that supports frequencies from 3 to 11GHz back in June of 2007. In late 2008 three other companies also achieved this milestone. Shortly, there will be yet another company that supports UWB above 6GHz, totaling five companies who are able to support Bluetooth-over-UWB. In the meantime, the WiMedia Alliance has completed 3 next generation specifications. One specification extends speeds over 1Gbps for applications such as streaming video. Another lowers both speed and power for mobile applications such as cell phones. Yet the third extends UWB to work over coax in the 2.112 to 3.6GHz band for home networks.
With its strategic initiatives successfully completed, WiMedia has come to a cross roads. Unlike any other wireless standard before it, WiMedia was specifically designed to support USB applications AND Bluetooth applications AND TCP/IP applications. Now that the technology has matured and succeeded at these goals, the future of the technology needs to be guided by the applications that drive those protocol standards. This means the USB-IF and the Bluetooth-SIG. That is what the recent WiMedia announcement is all about.
Much has been written recently about the demise of UWB, as the economy has tanked so have a few privately funded UWB companies along with the coincident closure of UWB efforts at Intel. Others have recently written that Intel’s “My WiFi” effort will be the death of UWB. On the one hand, I see the thinning of the number of UWB companies to be the natural progression of any technology. Inevitably only two or three companies survive to serve any new wireless market. On the other hand, unlike some of my colleagues, I believe Intel will have some limited success with their “My WiFi” effort. There is no real reason “My WiFi” can’t be made “good enough” for some types of bulk data transfer applications. Conversely, I don’t look to Intel as the shining paragon of auguring the future of wireless technology either.
Many writers and bloggers who cover technology like to make it out as a battle between WiFi and UWB. They seem to envision WiFi standing over the crumpled body of UWB, the would-be also-ran interloper. Fundamentally however, UWB will ultimately succeed because of physics, software application compatibility and consumers. UWB is far more power efficient than WiFi due to simple physics. If you want to move lots of data wirelessly over short distances with the minimum battery drain, then UWB is 10X more efficient than WiFi. Further, UWB has a far higher spatial capacity (Mbps/meter2); which is ideal for dense “cube farm” or cubicle office deployments. Clearly the speed and power efficiency of UWB make it the technology of choice as we move more and more into a wireless and mobile society. Additionally there is the issue of spectrum. There are many GHz of free unlicensed UWB spectrum available around the world. The only way to make practical use of this spectrum is to use the WiMedia UWB standard. As Moore’s Law brings UWB chips under $5 and under 400mw with speeds that can top 1Gbps, UWB will become pervasive. Why? Applications compatibility. Today there are over 2 Billion products sold every year that have a USB port making this the most successful interface in history. The world is yearning for a wireless version of USB, much like what 802.11 did for 10/100 Ethernet but on a much grander scale. Now add the over 500 Million phones sold every year that have Bluetooth that need a higher speed, more power efficient (Mbits/mA) wireless technology to move the ever increasing file sizes of digital content.
To illustrate the influence of applications legacy, let’s consider digital cameras. There are 130M digital cameras sold every year. The applications that are included with each and every DSC (digital still camera) sold and every single PC sold all are tied to the USB protocol. That is a big investment. During 2009 consumers will see UWB based DSCs come to market that wirelessly transfer photos to their PC at speeds 40X faster than WiFi. Why so much faster? The manufacturers of Wireless USB based DSCs don’t have to alter one single line of software to make it work, and work well. It is all native – just a convenient wireless version of that misplaced USB cable that came with the camera. In contrast, to avoid re-writing the ever-so-critical USB applications on their cameras, DSC manufacturers implement WiFi cameras by writing protocol converters that spoof their USB software stacks and then transfer the data over WiFi. The overhead to do this is enormous and makes the transfer relatively slow and inefficient. As a result, UWB and Wireless USB will succeed because of speed, power efficiency and the ability to support legacy USB software.
With cell phones, the dynamic will play out very differently. The Bluetooth SIG needs a power efficient path to high speeds that is very energy efficient at short range. Once again, UWB is the technological solution they have chosen to solve the problem. But wait – Bluetooth is using WiFi in the next release; right? Why implement UWB after releasing WiFi? First, WiFi chips are already showing up in phones as a means to connect to the Internet so why not use it. The chip is free. Longer term however, the WiFi Alliance will continue to focus their energies on what WiFi is meant to do – longer range, wireless Internet access. On the other hand, Bluetooth’s mission is short range, handset centric, battery efficient personal area network applications – which is ideally aligned with the capabilities of UWB. This recent marriage between WiFi and Bluetooth has been a marriage of convenience. However, going forward, with WiMedia’s spec now controlled by Bluetooth, they can own it and love it and guide it wherever their 10,000 members and handset customers want it to go. This is certainly not going to be in the direction that a long range wireless Internet standards body such as the WiFi alliance is likely to be going. So ultimately, WiMedia UWB will succeed in the hand set as well.
As we stand at the threshold of transferring the WiMedia UWB specifications (ECMA 368 & 369) to both USB and Bluetooth, what does the future of UWB hold? Undeniably, the road thus far has been long and hard. The technology itself is difficult and the obstacles that had to be overcome were daunting. However, throughout 2009 you will see interesting UWB products enter the market. These products will include wireless HDMI from Gefen and Monster Cable, as well as wireless docking stations, wireless hard drives and wireless digital cameras all from major consumer products companies. These products will begin to change the perception of the value of UWB. In 2010 the momentum will build. I expect the USB-IF will release the 1Gbps UWB specification they are receiving from WiMedia. In a similar manner, I expect the Bluetooth SIG to announce their own extensions of WiMedia which are backward compatible with the current 1.2 specification, but they will also probably add enhancements of their own that are especially suited to the cellular market.
In summary, as one of the founding members of the WiMedia Alliance, Alereon is both proud of WiMedia’s numerous accomplishments and happy to see the transition of the specifications into USB and into Bluetooth. WiMedia has been a success, and achieved its objectives. It is impossible to predict how UWB technology will evolve and the rate of adoption in 2009, 2010 or 2011. However a few things are certain. Pundits will continue to write about the demise of UWB until they buy the first UWB product that they love. UWB will ultimately succeed due to physics, Moore’s Law, free spectrum and WiMedia’s ability to support legacy USB and Bluetooth software applications. It is only a matter of time before UWB sees explosive growth. Alereon, like others, continues to work hard at making the future of Life Without Wires™ a reality.
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