Slashdot Mirror
Ultrawideband May Stall Before It Starts
judgecorp writes "The IEEE's group for faster Wi-Fi, 802.11n has reached the end-point, with the Intel-backed TGn Sync proposal taking the lead. This is a contrast to the ultrawideband world 802.15.3a, where the competing proposals are slugging it out. Indeed, the vendors could be in for more trouble than they expect getting UWB past regulators in Europe." From the article: "Within the next two years, we should start to see fast wireless links based on ultrawideband (UWB), taking the place of short-range connections such as USB and Firewire, and providing fast data links between consumer goods. Chipmakers are now on the verge of creating the silicon, and vendor groups are completing the standards.But the technology may have trouble getting a world market, as regulators wrestle with the objections of the cellphone industry. UWB standards are in deadlock at the IEEE; but what the regulators say matters far more to the future of the technology."
Why are regulators even listening to the cell phone industry? Existing monopolies should not be allowed to control new technologies in their own best interests.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
wireless is pretty good at the moment ("wireless-g + bluetooth ought to be enough...").
so go away and don't come back until you standards people have something that will mean monitors don't need physical connections to computers.
that's the only thing I can think of at the moment that will actually allow a qualitative change in the power of wireless technology - everything else is just bigger-numbers-BS.
there exists a very real threat of data theft over the air, especially with the range of WiFi compared to existing Bluetooth devices. Forget spyware keyloggers on your machine, how about ones across the street!
No kidding. The FBI will no longer need a big white van filled with Tempest equipment, they'll be able to sit in their k-car with a laptop and directional antenna, and just log everything...
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
The core objection is that ultrawideband steps on other people's spectrum used by other applications such as cell phones, satellite broadcasts, GPS, etc. Proponents claim that because the technology is ultrawideband, it deposits very little energy in any narrow slice of spectrum used by these other users. Opponents worry about what happens when a UWB transmitter is near one of there devices (yes, it can interfere with GPS) or if the world becomes saturated with UWB devices.
The problem is that each UWB device will raise the noise level in all the spectral bands that it covers. With enough UWB devices (or short enough distances to a UWB device), the utility of these other bands will drop. If you paid 5 billion dollars for something, you might scream if someone else started degrading the performance of your investment.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Does judgecorp work for Intel? The IEEE group voted 56:44% for the TGnSync protocol to become the standard instead of WWiSE, far short of the minumum 75% needed for approval (the 12% lead is IEEE news itself calls the vote "inconclusive", hardly the "end-point". Rather, everyone involved believes that the two consortia will revise their specs to merge them for the strong consensus required for approval, in a process that will continue for at least another year.
I note that even in the TechWorld article, by Peter Judge (which won't specify just how far from decisive was the actual vote), doesn't quite distort the status as "reached the end-point". But the Slashdot story, submitted by judgecorp, spins it even further than than TechWorld. Again, does judgecorp work for Intel, as well as TechWorld, paid to spin IEEE news more when there's less editorial oversight?
--
make install -not war
In the software world we're used to super-duper-ultra-wideband spaces: MD5 hashes are a good example. You don't have to bother decolliding MD5 hashes -- there are so many that no two documents are likely to ever collide by chance. But you can't just "add more bits" to the electromagnetic spectrum: once you get down below about a centimeter, you might as well be using infrared instead of radio.
It's the same problem as those RF-excited plasma light bulbs that were all the rage a while ago: the first 10,000 or so work great -- but by the time you deployed 10 of 'em to every household in America, nobody's radio would work any more.