Intel Promises UWB Products By 2006

prostoalex writes "Ultra WideBand radio is a technology that allows transmitting huge amounts of data over a short distance at very low power. At Intel Developer Forum this week Ben Manny, director of wireless technology development at Intel Research and Development, promised market deployment of UWB-based solutions by 2005-2006. Possible applications of UWB can be discovered in this article that also refers to UWB as 'Bluetooth on steroids'."

Comments

Sometime in the futre aboard an airplane...

[SuperKendall]

"This is the captian speaking. Our monitors have detected someone in first class using a UWB device, so as per international law we have jettisoned the entire first class cabin to ensure the saftey of this aircraft. The remaining delicacies not already consumed by said criminals will now be distributed by the flight attendants. Thank you for your attention."

Usefulness?

[HTMLSpinnr]

So if you wanted to turn this into a wireless network, you'd have to put base stations at every 10 feet?

And if you want to turn it into Wireless USB 2.0 - you can now broadcast your color print jobs of confidential documents from a corner office and have joe hacker on the opposite side of the wall eavesdropping the "connection"?

I think I'll keep my cables for now.

Re:Possible applications of UWB

[SerpentMage]

And this is where I would even consider that this technology never be implemented. I read someplace else that airlines may do a blanket ban on all electronic devices if UWB does conflict with airplanes. Imagine how boring those long flights will be now!

I'd say "Hello, fragmented computing", but...

[Skyshadow]

This would be a great thing in terms of fragmented computing, but there's been zero progress with the tools we have now.

I've played booster for this before, but the industry just hasn't reacted in any sort of reasonible way. Instead, we've seen mutant solutions like cell phones will sub-par digital cameras built in (which is, to me anyway, pretty much useless).

So, once more with feeling, here is my dream: I want a personal network that moves with me. I want to be able to have the various personal devices I'm carrying at any given time detect each other and communicate (securely) and to act in a way which raises the value of the whole beyond that of just the components.

I want to take pictures with my digital camera and have them stored on my iPod. I want my cell phone to detect this and use idle time to send bits back to my home computer (maybe the pictures could show up in email or something). I want to use my PDA to sort through my MP3s and have them play on wireless headphones. I want to use my PDA to get a real-time account balance (again, via my phone, which is more of a communication hub) when I'm trying to decide how much to spend at lunch.

I don't want a *wearible* computer. I want my computer to be the sum of my devices.