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An Introduction To Wireless USB (WUSB)
An anonymous reader writes "This technical whitepaper by Rafael Kolic, a technology marketing manager in Intel's Corporate Technology Group, introduces Wireless USB (WUSB) and explains how it will impact device performance and mobility. The latest iteration of USB technology, WUSB will offer the same functionality as standard wired USB devices -- but without the cabling."
Or the security.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
So soon after the "Bluetooth is Dying" article we get this.
:)
Methinks a conspiracy!
In all honesty, this looks like quite nice tech though I can imagine some of the implementation will be a real pill. Problems like how to manage roaming a device from one cluster to the next will surely require some ingenuity, especially given that backwards compatibility with classic USB devices is a goal (though I presume that those will only be adjuncts to the cluster, sitting at a wirelesswired bridge).
Bluetooth has fulfilled quite well the idea of a truly ad-hoc network among devices, but I assume that will be a much more difficult thing to achieve with WUSB, making some, I'm sure, doubt the point of the project. I think the idea of devices beaming data around to each other at 480 mbits answers that one quite nicely. I look forward to this*
*linux and OS X support for this; until then, I ain't touchin' it
Will this have longer range than Bluetooth? If so, it will fly, especially if some sort of OS-transparent USB-WUSB adapter is available. If not, I doubt there's much sure for it. What about security? Will it be encrypted at all? Last thing I need is to be using a WUSB mouse on a plane and having some kid three rows back taking over and h4x0r1n6 my b0x3n.
You are not the customer.
No, Bluetooth is much smarter because it doesn't require a PC. Bluetooth is peer-to-peer whereas USB is a stupid bus for connecting devices to a PC.
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Bluetooth is a low power, relatively low speed, low range wireless personal network. It's not meant to transfer large blocks of data.
Unfortunately Bluetooth arose in an age where it was already outdated, as our devices quickly became too powerful for this dismal standard.
I'm really excited about wireless USB, especially if cheap solutions allow us to convert wired to wireless. I work in a high tech classroom with digital smartboards and a stereoscopic wall, and one of the problems we're having is connecting devices (such as cameras and microphones for video conferencing) from the classroom back to the computer closet behind everything. The normal cables just don't reach, so we have to either use a series of repeaters, or USB to ethernet converters, both of which are nontrivial in price.
Of course if they could develop cheaper wifi chips, everything could just have an 802.11x interface and you could network any devices, so maybe what we'll see is a happy medium between bluetooth and wifi.
Wait a second. Has anybody figured out why we need batteries for our wireless keyboards and mice? Is it a conspiracy? I mean, seriously. You can't convince me that wireless mice -- which use all of 1 AA battery that lasts for, well, months I imagine.. couldn't be powered by some kind of capacity setup and a wheel that generated power from the mouse ball. Of course, this is different with optical mice, but there's no reason there couldn't be some kind of ball for generating power, and then optical sensors for the tracking, so as to avoid the traditional problem with conventional mice where the pickups get dirty..
And keyboards? Give me a break! Don't tell me there isn't enough energy coming from my typing, to transmit that information to my computer...
Has anybody worked on this?
I want my patent.
- reid
Not many at Best Buy, However at UPS (as in United Parcel Service) they recently bought scanners using Bluetooth to connect a base station attached to workers by a belt, with a scanner strapped to their hands. The result is soemthing very Sci-Fi'ish and actually quite useful (you can walk the scanner portion long distances away from the base portion and it will still function as intended -- using bluetooth)
I'm certain other large firms have things like this using bluetooth. While I have no personal use for bluetooth, and prefer wired devices anyhow, there are undoubtedly many companies using it to solve tricky issues.
Though since bluetooth is dead I guess nobody will be using it anymore.
Is it just me or is anyone else in a perpetual state of battery hell? I'm looking at the devices on my desk right now that I use throught my day -- PDA, Graphing Calculator, Cell Phone, Digital Camera, and two MP3 players (one solid state for jogging, one HD based one for trips).
Between all these things I'm drowning in power transformers, docking stations, and battery chargers! I feel like a fleet manager, its practically a full time job making sure everything has power.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
I can understand a bluetooth iPod or other mobile device, but for electronics equipment that sits in your house, wires work better. For example, I don't see why people put up with crappy 10-55 Mb/s Wifi when standard cabling is so cheap! Likewise, why do you want wireless HDTV for home theater? It seems to offer little benefit for stationary equipment. I think it has more to do with conspicuous consumption (oh look at how hip I am with the tech!) than practical benefits.
Competition between standards makes a lot less sense. With Betamax vs. VHS a lot of people, consumers and manufacturers, wasted a lot of time investing in and supporting the wrong one. (DVD writing is a similar, which was saved in part by the shared form factor). This could easily happen here, though I personally think Bluetooth and WUSB are very different (different topologies, for one thing).
You do have a point though. Some protocols/standards are just better, and there should be competition between groups to get their standard accepted. But this should happen before large-scale adoption of one or the other, to minimise 'damage' to the early adopters. At the moment it looks like Intel is jumping the gun, because its standard is not ratified by the IEEE (the relevant standards agency). Better for everyone if an open standard is agreed by everyone before devices are put on the shelf. Sadly, this doesn't always happen.
Of course if so, protocol designers should just define that at lowest protocol level such features are out of scope.. that is, to indicate they had done conscious decision, not that they were ignorant of obvious needs for actual appliances.
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For example, I don't see why people put up with crappy 10-55 Mb/s Wifi when standard cabling is so cheap!
Wireless is freedom, and it doesn't require you to snake wires through your walls (which is a major bitch in most cases if you want to do it right -- i.e. not running it through an air return and then hanging the wire around your baseboards). The few times I've really had the need for 100Mbps (versus the 36Mbps I'm currently getting over 802.11g, up on the second floor with the WAP in the basement), I'll bring the laptop to the basement and plug-in, but otherwise this whole wireless thing is fabulous.
Well, you are talking about a distance of a few feet for your headset. Your net2phone connection has to go through encoding to TCP/IP and transmission through miles of cable.
-CowboyNick
Hey look kids, Rob Enderle showed up.
It comes down to what you need.
802.11* is a high speed standard for replacing much of the Ethernet wiring. Great for mobile devices that have good sized batteries (i.e. laptops).
Bluetooth went the other direction. Instead of focusing on speed, why not power? Bluetooth has a much lower power requirement, and at ~760kbps makes a great way for cell phones (which are currently in the ~128kbps range) to talk to small, low power devices (like a palm or WinCE or Zaurus).
I recently had the choice of PDAs to get one with bluetooth or 802.11. I took the bluetooth and so far have not had any regrets about it. Of course, my laptop has both 802.11 and bluetooth in it.
I know not to run services that don't use encryption over the internet or over wireless, but remember that there are lots of stupid people out there.
I couldn't have said it better.
It's been said again and again, but I'll do it again for fun if nothing else: if you need a very high speed connection, plug the damn thing in.
Here's the design philosophy for wireless communications, and for all things, really:
1: Make it cheap
2: Make it fast
3: Make it so it dosen't suck energy like a muscle car sucks gas.
Chose two.
It will hold true always. There will always be a solution that, while not the fastest, accompolishs most things that one could wish to do with it, be more cost effective, and use less energy.
Guess what? Bluetooth is that solution.
thats a bit of an unfair comparison. wires are cheap, very cheap, it's just that most places mark up wires to a huge amount to try and make up for the cheap pc's they sell. as as for radio chips, they might even be cheaper than that, but not to you, to someone buying 5000 of the damn things.
dave
"Bluetooth is much smarter because it doesn't require a PC."
Smarter in the sense of "the best networks are dumb, and innovation happens at the edges"?
Let's have a protocol that's as easy to solder to a PCB as RS232 is with no licensing requirements, a spec that fits on 2 pages of A4, and controller chips that you can buy in Maplin. Then we might get somewhere with this wireless idea...
Let me summarize why Bluetooth is not dead, and wireless USB is not really a competitor for bluetooth:
Wireless USB Power requirements: 300 mw ("with a target of 100 over time")
Bluetooth power requirements: 100 mW, 2.5 mW, 1 mW (the last two are class 2 and 3, the variants widely used.)
Frankly, wireless USB sounds less interesting to me. Well, it's a threat to Wifi, from the sound of it. It's really, really fast and power hungry. It sounds primarily for unwiring our desk-bound, non-mobile computer peripherals from the computer. But then we will have to plug them all into the wall instead. So there are a few that had power anyway and now we've cut the number of cables from 2 to 1 - OK. But quite a few the only cable was USB (and that was providing power) anyway. It wouldn't be a viable solution for things like wireless mouses and keyboards, for instance. And I don't think I'd want that instead of bluetooth for the PDA/phone or PDA/computer link.
There are a lot of applications where very low power (1 mw!) is much more important than bandwidth.
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but if the article's claim is true this is far far smarter than Bluetooth
;)
"WUSB will offer the same functionality as standard wired USB devices -- but without the cabling"
does that mean that i can still have small devices draw power from the bus? wireless power transmision sounds good to me
Software Freedom Day!.
RS232 is simple as you say although the spec is bigger than two pages.
The Bluetooth specs include shared access to a noisy medium, so theres a lot of pages to the specification just to get that working. Want to see how many pages of specs relating to the various networks there are? Including the actual media, the signal as well as the bottom layer protocols?
Bluetooth also includes a lot of bluetooth profiles. This are roughly equivalent to the HTTP, SMTP, IMAP etc specs as used for internet services. You want to see how many of those can fit on two pages?
The only reason bluetoth has innovation happening at the edges is because the in-between is the ether.
You want something as simple as 2 pages and a bit of soldering? How about morse code and AM modulation, cos thats all you'll get.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com