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UWB emerges as a major threat to Bluetooth
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 07:46:28 -0500
To: "NEXTEL-1 () yahoogroups com" <NEXTEL-1 () yahoogroups com> From: Marcel <Marcelrf () Bellsouth net> Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 22:28:47 -0500 Subject: [NEXTEL-1] UWB emerges as a major threat to Bluetooth UWB emerges as a major threat to Bluetooth Bluetooth, introduced with much fanfare three years ago, is finally taking steps (baby steps) toward commercial viability; but it may well be running out of time to prove itself. As we said on several occasions since late 2001, the honor for finishing Bluetooth off will likely belong to Ultrawideband (UWB), which the FCC approved for limited commercial use in February 2002. The impression that UWB is going to deal Bluetooth the final blow was intensified this week in meetings in Dallas, at which major manufacturers - among them Intel and Sony - were considering which technology of those submitted to them by leading wireless communication companies to settle on as the new standard to compete, and possibly knock out, Bluetooth. One technology has caught everyones eye - UWB. WPANs create wireless connections in the home over short distances, which allow for synchronization among PDAs, computers, television sets, cable TV box, etc. Allied Business Intelligence estimates that the winning technology behind the standard, to be designated 802.15.3a, will likely generate $1.39 billion in revenue by 2007. The IEEE will not make its decision until June at the earliest, but there is a consensus that UWB has emerged as the clear winner from this week's meetings: The technology was used by 95 percent of the proposals submitted, according to Ben Manny, an Intel director of wireless technology development. UWB is simpler, cheaper, less power-hungry, and 100 times faster than Bluetooth (currently the leading WPAN technology), adopted by makers of cell phones and PDAs, as well as by companies such as Microsoft and Apple Computer. To its critics, UWB might be a major source of interference in neighboring bandwidths. Most radio transmissions operate in narrow bands of frequency. Cell phone broadcasts, for example, use about 100MHz at a time. The pulse of UWB, in contrast, is tens of thousands of megahertz wide and infiltrates into bandwidth already occupied. UWB supporters say that the wave has so little actual power that it does not pose any interference threat. Some of the proposals companies submitted were based on UWBs original characteristics of a single, very wide wave. Other companies were more innovative, submitting proposals based on breaking the wave into segments measuring a few thousand megahertz each: XtremeSpectrum offered a proposal which assigned the wave to two different segments of spectrum (Motorola, which once had two different proposals in the running, backed the XtremeSpectrum plan). Intel proposed assigning the wave to 14 different areas. The difference between the two types of proposals is not performance -- both would operate at about the same speed, transmitting data at 100 megabits per second over a distance of 10 meters. Rather, some countries may place restrictions on portions of the large swath of bandwidth that America's FCC last year set aside for UWB. For more information on IEEE 802.15 Working Group for WPAN, see the group's FAQ http://lists.fiercemarkets.com/c.html?s=69l,1yqf,8mf,fbs9,k2xy,lp64,96ow and its Web site http://lists.fiercemarkets.com/c.html?s=69l,1yqf,8mf,6j98,m0qz,lp64,96ow For background information, see this report by Ben Charny http://lists.fiercemarkets.com/c.html?s=69l,1yqf,8mf,cfo,gm2,lp64,96ow . For those technically inclined, see the comprehensive "A Brief History of UWB Communications" by Robert Fontana http://lists.fiercemarkets.com/c.html?s=69l,1yqf,8mf,8ue6,8p6x,lp64,96ow -- "NEXTEL-1 IT'S NOT JUST NEXTEL" Note The New address Subscribe to Nextel-1: http://www.groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/NEXTEL-1 "NEXTEL2 FOR iDEN SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS" Subscribe to Nextel2: http://www.groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/NEXTEL2 "WIRELESS FORUM HOMELAND SECURITY GROUP" The Complete Resource for Wireless Homeland Security. Subscribe to WFHSG: http://www.groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/WFHSG ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- UWB emerges as a major threat to Bluetooth Dave Farber (Mar 14)