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Ultrawideband Signal Passes Data Through Walls

writertype writes "You may already be familiar with ultrawideband; UWB technology has been specifically talked about and designed to replace wired USB connections for over a year. Due to its high bandwidth, it's also been considered as an A/V cable replacement. The problem is that UWB radio performance degrades precipitously, effectively confining it to a single room. Until now, that is. Startup TZero says its UWB implementation provides high throughput through walls. Will this be an effective competitor to 802.11n?"

17 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. 3.1GHZ Has trouble going through walls by IntelliAdmin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The speed increases are nice with this technology. The problem is physics. As it stands UWB runs from 3.1GHZ to 10.6GHZ. Radio in this band operates much like visible light - it is easily blocked by walls and other obstacles. Because of this I think that 802.11b/a/c/n are going to be around for a long time

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    1. Re:3.1GHZ Has trouble going through walls by Anon-Admin · · Score: 3, Funny

      As it stands UWB runs from 3.1GHZ to 10.6GHZ. Radio in this band operates much like visible light

      Oh Microwave. Now your usb harddrive will save your data and cook your eggs all at once :)

    2. Re:3.1GHZ Has trouble going through walls by pe1chl · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Try 802.11g and 802.11a equipment side-by-side. You will find that the 802.11a (5.5 GHz) equipment has considerably more difficulty over non-line-of-sight paths than 802.11g (2.4 GHz) has.

    3. Re:3.1GHZ Has trouble going through walls by Moby+Cock · · Score: 4, Informative

      One major issue with UWB is the antenna design. Its proving very hard to built antennas that have constant gain over the whole BW. As a result, the antenna essentially induces a transfer function on the transmitted (or recieved) signal. It could be possible to compensate using DSP in the Tx or Rx circuits, however the transfer function is different for differing RF environments. That is, move the metal legged table in your living room and the compensation algorithms are no longer valid. There are a few new antenna designs being proposed that focus on ensuring the s21 values are constant over the whole UWB spectrum, but its still early days with those.

      The 'going through walls' part is a bit of a tempest in a teapot. That will come when the RF aspects of UWB are better designed.

    4. Re:3.1GHZ Has trouble going through walls by pe1chl · · Score: 3, Informative

      I recently built a 400m (a quarter mile) link using 802.11a pointtopoint equipment (1W ERP, max legal power here).
      It is line-of-sight w.r.t. buildings, but there was a group of trees inbetween. The signal had to pass trough maybe 20 meters of foilage.

      The link barely worked. Sometimes 6 Mbps, sometimes 12 Mbps.
      Relocating one of the endpoints so that those trees were out of the way (actual position lower than it was, now just skimming a building) improved the signal by about 20dB.

      Result: 54Mbps link and power output decreased by 5-6dB (by TPC). Could probably gain another 6dB by having more clearance above the building.

      I really did not expect this, comparing with results on 2.4 GHz.
      You are right that allowed ERP on 2.4 is lower, but I think there would have been a big difference in path loss in this case.

  2. Quick response... by JPamplin · · Score: 5, Informative
    Will this be an effective competitor to 802.11n?

    Um, no. 802.11n has significantly greater range (as a spec, at least). Plus, if this company is claiming to have developed it, I don't think they will just give it up for free. 802.11n is a public standard.

    So, no. ;-)

  3. Other uses by loraksus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    These folks didn't seem to have too much trouble trying to get the signal through walls ;)

    http://www.uwb.org/RadarVision2i/rv2iperf.htm
    That is a pretty primitive picture, some of the stuff in labs is quite a bit more advanced.

    BTW, is anyone noticing font corruption on that page in Firefox?

    --
    1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcfv gbhnjmk,l.;/
  4. I don't know about you chaps by also-rr · · Score: 5, Funny

    But I find that for the best data rate through walls all that one requires is a sledge hammer and a fibre optic cable.

    1. Re:I don't know about you chaps by CrazyJim1 · · Score: 4, Funny

      What about going through a wall with a Station Wagon full of backup tapes?

  5. Yea yea yea... by suv4x4 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    UWB technology has been specifically talked about and designed to replace wired USB connections for over a year. Due to its high bandwidth, it's also been considered as an A/V cable replacement.

    Yea, yea, yea... That sounds so desperately trying to hype it up. Just a month ago we were discussing that current digital A/V *cables* can't handle high enough resolutions for some larger (resolution) monitors out there, which requires two or even four DVI cables.

    We've discussed also how the new standard introduced, is just as bad (despite claims to "scale indefinitely", in theory, with other equipment and all that..).

    Now this is of course gonna replace everything, including food and water in one year. Therefore buy our shares and give us venture capital. Screw it.

    The problem is that UWB radio performance degrades precipitously, effectively confining it to a single room. Until now, that is. Startup TZero says its UWB implementation provides high throughput through walls. Will this be an effective competitor to 802.11n?

    I don't get it: we have enough problems with people logging into our wifi networks because it passes through walls already (even if it's password protected and so on, it can be hacked into), and now they found a way to do the same with UWB? I kinda like it in my room only, neighbours will have to buy theirs.

  6. Re:What about bluetooth? by MountainMan101 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yes. Bluetooth was designed to replace IR, which in turn replaced short wires. It was purely a personal wireless protocol, short range between paired objects. Wireless USB is designed for higher bandwith, although I don't see it being a competitor to WiFi - mainly because they can exist in the same way that wired USB and Ethernet do.

    You may ask why we can't have one all encompassing protocol - the answer, cost. Bluetooth is the cheapest, GPRS and WiFi cost more. So for a BT headset the cost would rocket up if it had to do be fully compliant with a new protocol.

    Anyway, in the grand scheme it's all a bit pointless. There's more interesting things in life, like mountains, women and fast cars. Who cares about wireless!

  7. building construction by FudRucker · · Score: 3, Interesting

    as anyone knows reading my coments knows i am no IT guy, but i do work construction and done it for years, most commercial office buildings are built not with lumber and a lot of what is called sheetmetal stud and track, also there is sheetmetal HVAC ducts & etc.; lots of metal, well anyhow metal always blocks radio signals so within a large building with enough walls to go through i can see why wireless will have limitations...

    i would imagine a large enough office building would benefit from a repeater system like some ham and commercial radio systems already use...

    --
    Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
  8. n is still better by MooseTick · · Score: 4, Insightful

    802.11n makes many improvements over 11.g. It provides for greater redundancy(MIMO), security, speed(400MBPS+), and more distant coverage. It is also an open standard so anyone can use it without worring about paying someone license fees today, tomorrow, or 3 years from now when it is commonplace. Since its speed can allow multiple hdtv connections to stream at once and the costs should not be any greater than 11b or 11g devices, the n standard will soon dominate wireless networking and connections.

  9. No Data by thePig · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The article (press release ??) has NO data whatsoever on how they solved this issue?
    Since the high frequency makes it *very* less able to go around objects, how did they do it indeed?
    Were they able to use EIT ?

    BTW, they did not speak about the degradation pattens in the article.
    Any ideas on the same?

    --
    rajmohan_h@yahoo.com
  10. Different markets by VoiceOfDog · · Score: 3, Informative

    Ultrawideband is being developed as a WPAN standard for IEEE 802.15.3a, which aims to provide a high (~20Mbps) alternative to Bluetooth. .15.3a is being called "WiMedia" and is intended for use in the Wireless USB (WUSB) standard. This is clearly the market this company is trying to address.
    WPAN (Personal Area Networks), like Bluetooth or ZigBee, aim at a different market than WLAN (WiFi). For a WPAN, it may be advantageous to have a shorter range to reduce interference.
    Extending the range to blur the line between WPAN and WLAN is an interesting business plan. There are numberous competing technolgies in the WPAN arena, and history tells that not all will survive. Time will tell if this one is viable.

  11. mommy! by bigattichouse · · Score: 3, Funny

    Mommy, I feel all tingly inside!

    Oh, sweety - thats just the Ultawideband USB, now with extra radiation!

    Oooo, it feels like progress! But my hair is falling out!

    Thats ok honey, thats how you know it's working!

    --
    meh
  12. Re:Fix the drawback by Russellkhan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think the thing that makes it annoying with USB is that there's no simple visual cue (e.g. shape of the plug) to tell you which way to plug it. There is that little plastic bit on one side, but for some reason I have a harder time remembering which side of the USB socket has the plastic bit than I do remembering for example which way the wider side of a VGA socket faces.

    --
    Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.