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Coming Soon: Ultra Wide Band

Posted by michael on from the cure-for-what-ails-you dept.

JScarpace writes: "Robert X. Cringely has a new article in which he talks about Ultra Wide Band (UWB), a new wireless communications technology which may allow wireless networking speeds up to a gigabit per second. Read the article."

2 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Positioning by chill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    More likely UWB will compliment GPS nicely. GPS will be used for wilderness, nautical and aviation. UWB will be used to supplement GPS by giving much more accurate measurements in the urban and sub-urban areas -- where 80% of the population lives.

    +/- 6 meters isn't good enough for things like parking cars; locating stores/kids in malls; densely populated areas and it really sucks for vertical distances. Yes, differential GPS with ground stations really helps, but UWB could make location-based information and services pervasive.

    UWB has a lot of potential.

    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
  2. Re:Security, not bandwidth by hpa · · Score: 5, Insightful
    because its broad frequency range includes the ultra-low frequencies used to communicate with submerged submarines, UWB can be used easily in buildings and even underground.

    Bullshit.

    There is so little bandwidth in those low frequencies that you can hardly talk about "ultrawideband"! If it wasn't clear that he doesn't know what he was talking about beforehand, that statement should have made it clear.

    "Ultrawideband" is really not anything other than a marketing name for direct-sequence spread spectrum (DSSS). It has been rebranded in no small part in order to attempt to get the FCC and similar regulatory agencies to allow it to be spread across already allocated radio bands (where they become part of the noise floor) rather than confined in between narrowband applications.

    All of this really isn't anything particularly earth-shattering. The standard electromagnetic spectrum frequency domainis given by a Fourier transform of the electromagnetic wave using sine waves as base functions. Spread-spectrum technologies simply create a new "frequency domain" use a different set of base functions. They are resistant to interference or jamming only because most sources of interference or jamming operates in the standard frequency domain, not in the "alternate" one. 802.11b actually uses direct-sequence spread spectrum (spread across a fairly wide 2.4 GHz band officially used for industrial applications and microwave ovens) already -- the security added by DSSS is automatically removed by the fact that you can buy 802.11b-compatible waveform correlators for a few hundred dollars at any electronics store. Sorry guys, you still need encryption.