Ultrawideband Soon To Be Legal In Europe

ukhackster writes "ZDNet UK is reporting that ultrawideband will be legalized in Europe within 6 months, but with tougher controls than in America — the only place where it is legal now. Ultrawideband offers wireless connectivity at speeds up to 1Gbps, and is meant to supersede USB and clear our desks of wires. In Europe, fears that UWB might interfere with other technologies have kept it out of the market. Opening up the European market could give manufacturers a powerful incentive to push UWB." From the article: "[S]ources confirmed to ZDNet UK that the restrictions put forward by the EC would indeed be more rigorous than those imposed in the US, although they would not be so restrictive as to make it impossible for some global harmonization of UWB devices... It is understood that the committee decision to allow UWB was based on a far from unanimous majority, with some Scandinavian countries and France opposing the proposal."

Comments

Re:Err, testing??

[Dr. Zowie]

The problem is the "death of a million cuts" -- by the time you've tested for it, it's too late. Each UWB device slightly degrades the radio spectrum around it for more conventional narrowband devices. One or two or even a thousand such devices in a square mile might be OK -- but by the time you've got a hundred thousand or a million of these things deployed in an urban core, it's too late to back out.

You can see the effect of progressive RF contamination by testing the range of (say) a CB rig in San Jose, California versus Tracy, California. Both have similar topography but vastly different levels of background RF noise in the 20-30 MHz band. (for what it's worth, a pair of car-mount Radio Schlock CB rigs with 1/4-wave antennae will work at up to about 35 miles in the California Central Valley, but only up to about 3 miles in Silicon Valley).

Clear our desk of wires?

[Chabil Ha']

Taking a peek behind my desktop PC, I see mostly wires for the following:

2 VGA cables to my dual monitors
2 Power cords to those monitors
1 power cable for the PC
1 RF antenna for my FM tuner
1 Coax for my cable TV
1 cord for USB mouse
1 cord for USB keyboard
1 cord for power to my speakers
1 cord to connect speakers to PC

Let's do the math. 2/11 of those cords can be fixed with UWB. Unless wireless power is part of the spec, I'm quite sceptical of its desk clearing ability...