Challenges mount for ultra-wideband wireless

Ultra-wideband wireless, which underlies wireless USB products, suffered another jolt recently when one UWB pioneer shut down operations.

WiQuest, a fabless semiconductor company in Allen, Texas, closed its doors when it couldn't raise additional funding. Intel's decision to scrub its UWB research, made months ago, surfaced into public view about the same time. And WiQuest rival Alereon announced it had acquired part of Stonestreet One's wireless USB business: its USB drivers.

Last May, Texas Instruments announced it was withdrawing from the WiMedia Alliance, which oversees the UWB specification and interoperability testing, and backing 802.11n Wi-Fi as the next underlying radio technology for the Bluetooth protocols, a project launched in February by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group. That seemed to push the SIG's plan to run Bluetooth over UWB, announced two years ago, to a lower priority.

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

Ultra-wideband wireless, which underlies wireless USB products, suffered another jolt recently when one UWB pioneer shut down operations.

WiQuest, a fabless semiconductor company in Allen, Texas, closed its doors when it couldn't raise additional funding. Intel's decision to scrub its UWB research, made months ago, surfaced into public view about the same time. And WiQuest rival Alereon announced it had acquired part of Stonestreet One's wireless USB business: its USB drivers.

Last May, Texas Instruments announced it was withdrawing from the WiMedia Alliance, which oversees the UWB specification and interoperability testing, and backing 802.11n Wi-Fi as the next underlying radio technology for the Bluetooth protocols, a project launched in February by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group. That seemed to push the SIG's plan to run Bluetooth over UWB, announced two years ago, to a lower priority.

And earlier this year, Sony announced its own UWB alternative: a short-range, low-power wireless technology, dubbed TransferJet, which has won the backing of more than a dozen of the world's biggest consumer-electronics companies.

On the plus side, start-up USB-chipmaker Staccato Communications announced that its new Ripcord2 family of single-chip CMOS USB silicon devices had won certification from the WiMedia Alliance. The Ripcord2 silicon supports additional frequencies (so vendors can build UWB products using one device that can work globally), hopping among channels (increasing range), sidestepping radar or cellular networks to avoid interference.

UWB targets what are called "personal area networks" or short-range radio connections among client devices, such as a laptop PC and a group of peripherals. Most current products using UWB radios implement the wireless USB standard, intended to replace the snarl of USB cables that interconnect a wide range of clients and peripherals. Steve Brightman, marketing director for WiMedia Alliance, says industry analysts seem to expect roughly 600,000 or so Wireless USB products to ship this year, and far larger numbers next year. He notes that the first such product only appeared at the end of 2007.

The range is short: It can reach as far as 60 feet in some implementations, but most users connect devices that are less than 15 feet apart, says Eric Broockman, CEO of Alereon.

UWB's strengths are its very-high throughput -- now typically in the 50M to 100Mbps range with first-generation chips or chipsets -- and very low power, about 1mW per Mbps compared to 15 to 20mW per Mbps for 802.11g and estimated 6 to 8mW per Mbps for 802.11n. Alereon has demonstrated throughput of 200Mbps, according to Broockman, and the next generation of UWB silicon will offer peak rates of 300M to 377Mbps and eventually more. But that's still well below the 450Mbps originally touted by UWB proponents.

The fundamentals of the technology remain solid, even if the U.S. and global economies make it tough for UWB start-ups to find new venture funding, Broockman says. The number of wireless USB products is growing because of the sheer convenience of using wireless connections and the ability to use today's USB-based software transparently.