TELECOMS & MOBILE
Battle rages for UWB standards
14-11-2003
by
A failure to reach agreement on the industry standard for ultra-wideband radio (UWB) could lead to a two standards being promoted by opposing industry groups.
According to reports, the Multiband-OFDM Alliance (MBOA) and the Motorola and XtremeSpectrum group, who form the two main opposing camps in the UWB world, have been unable to reach a consensus on a common standard. Both group claims to have a technology that conforms to US regulations for a high-speed, low-power, wireless UWB system.
This could slow down the implementation of UWB, which promises low-cost radio connectivity at speeds approaching 400Mbps and is widely seen as having immense potential for digital media distribution in homes and in portable devices. Such connectivity is currently provided by Bluetooth and Wi-Fi (802.11), but UWB would have a far greater capacity than Bluetooth. Not only is UWB capable of carrying large amounts of data over a short distance, it does so using only a small amount of power. It also has the ability to carry signals through doors and other obstacles that tend to reflect signals at more limited bandwidths.
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is likely to endorse the Motorola XtremeSpectrum direct-sequence CDMA UWB proposal, according to some industry reports. It is also understood the opposing MBOA standard is unlikely to receive sufficient support from the IEEE to allow it to proceed to the next stage of the IEEE approval process. Despite this, both groups are apparently determined to proceed with their standards and attempts by the IEEE to reconcile the two groups in order to have one standard are understood to have failed.
The differences between the two groups are based on the potential for either of the new standards to cause interference with other radio users, as well as the cost and complexity of the chips required to implement the standards as well as issues related to power consumption.
Previous communications standards splits, such as the split between the GSM and CDMA mobile phone standards, have led to separate product sets being developed for different markets.
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