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Staccato Proclaims UWB Technology Isn't Dead
MojoKid writes "Earlier this month, Ultra-Wideband mainstay TZero closed its doors, leaving the once hopeful format in limbo. One of the few UWB supporters still hanging around is Staccato Communications, and not surprisingly, its CEO is stepping up to address the overall situation and assure the general public that the wireless format it supports is far from dead. In a long-winded note from the desk of Marty Colombatto, he frankly states that 'to conclude that "UWB is dead" is a gross misinterpretation of recent events and ignores the lessons of relevant history.' Potentially the most interesting tidbit is that UWB is supposedly getting a 'makeover' this year. Marty even goes so far as to say that new developments in 2009 are sure to breathe new life into the technology.'"
Update 2/22 at 17:41 by SS: Reader coldmist pointed out a related Ars Technica piece looking into the state of wireless HD video, which contains some interesting information about UWB.
Netcraft confirms it... Slashdot memes are overused.
It's going for a walk and it feels happy!
Ars Technica recently had a great writeup on the state of wireless video, which included a lot of info on UWB.
It's worth a read.
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
UWB seemed to be the promise of a completely wireless future. I remember them saying that it would eliminate interference, be much, much faster, and cover a much larger area. How many of those things are still true? It seems to me that transmission strength is a huge limitation on any wireless device. Since UWB theoretically covers the whole spectrum, I still fail to see how it does not cause at least some level of interference with other devices. Even a strobing effect across the spectrum would cause some level of signal degradation with other radio based devices. I guess I should just read some more about it.
From the wikipedia article:
UWB communications transmit in a way that doesn't interfere largely with other more traditional 'narrow band' and continuous carrier wave uses in the same frequency band. However first studies show that the rise of noise level by a number of UWB transmitters puts a burden on existing communications services. This may be hard to bear for traditional systems designs and may affect the stability of such existing systems.
So interference is such a problem that transmission strengths are vastly reduced to close proximity devices, hence the adoption of UWB for PAN. So the advantage is purely that UWB is really fast? I hate to say it I don't think anything is going to really compete with 802.11x. Unless Intel starts including it in its chipsets or dell starts throwing it on their notebooks, I doubt it will ever leave the niche market. I mean look at 802.11n, very few people are actually using it in their homes yet, and probably won't be for some years. People like to just plug in stuff and have it work. WiFi is so pervasive now that I can't really imagine anything taking over in the short to mid term. When your average fiber connection in the home is running at 200mbps, people might start caring that their network is suddenly "slow."
zosxavius photography
Isn't it supposed to be used in Wireless USB? Or is that dead as well? Wouldn't surprise me. Instead of copying the things people like about USB (plug in and it works), they made it as a competitor for Bluetooth, with all the security and authentication crap that involves. For chrissake! What are the security implications for giving free access to a bubblejet to anybody within a 5 meter radius? And which ones of those couldn't be handled by a button on the printer that says "trust the first unit trying to connect in the next 30 seconds, and remember it for the next month"? Forget about synchronising handhelds, Bluetooth has that market solidly in hand. How about that printer broadcasting the URL where you can get the appropriate (digitally signed) driver? Cut yourself a niche, instead of playing "me too".
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
I have worked on some very interesting applications of UWB for the medical industry where its high bandwidth at low power consumption levels cannot be beaten. The problem with getting these potentially life saving devices to market is that the UWB vendors aren't interested in the low volumes and long support cycles that the medical industry requires. This chicken and egg problem was not expected as that it was assumed that consumer demand for UWB would have been sufficient by now to drive an increase in the number of available chipsets, not the decrease that we see today.
What is UWB? Please answer so 1,000 plus /. users slashdot google looking for the answer.
I designed an UWB receiver for one of the UWB startups 3-4 years back. UWB has a few problems from the start that make it a POS --
1. The wideband nature of the beast and the fact that it uses a roughly 250MHz wide channel. (Its OFDM modulation on a a multichannel structure with 200+ parallel channels) - When You get to the practical nature of the beast, the receiver structures require huge huge amounts of power. UWB's radiated at the antenna power is low, but the amount of juice sucked in to power the beast is huge.
2. Due to (1) its never going to be battery powered. Power cord is a must have. So much for "wireless" duh....
The UWB proponents tried to sell UWB as a way to kill off the interconnect cords for TV-DVR-DVD-BlewRay ;) systems. Well, you still got to power plug them so whats the big deal??? Besides, most of that stuff is a "plug once and forget" thing, so its really not that big a deal.
www.effectiveelectrons.com "chips that work" Analog, RF, Mixed Signal
It's pining for the Fjords!
Anyone that's worked at a technology startup will know that the technology piece is only one part of the success equation. Management effectiveness, execution, and funding are also significant. In TZero's case, the technology was fine (despite some of the incorrect speculation about UWB in general above). If you're interested in seeing how TZero's UWB product actually performs, you can read a report by the University of Victoria that provides test results for TZero's wireless card and its wireless HDMI video product. http://www.ece.uvic.ca/~xdong/WiMedia_testing_report.pdf Also, CNET reviewed the Gefen Wireless HDMI product which is based on the TZero design.
Couldn't wireless HD video theoretically be done with a very small ATSC transmitter with just barely enough range to reach your TV? Obviously the FCC might have some issues, though...
...staccato means disconnected in Italian. Can't remember though if it's in Neapolitan dialect.
As the developer of two generations of IEEE 802.15.4A (which is one of the standards for UWB receivers) receiver processors, I can say that this standard is on life support if not dead. In order to be able to synchronize in all modes, you need the equivalent of more than 7 GOPS (operations on 4 to 7 bit data). I won't go into technical details why I needed all those Giga-OPS, but it is during synchronization that you need them. In other words: You burn power while trying to find out whether there is something in the air. Ouch.
There was another UWB competing with the intel camp UWB, but intel was/is so bent on owning everybody's pipes that they squashed it even when the other UWB's backing vendor (Motorola/Freescale) essentially offered it royalty-free. My impression was that the other UWB was set up to avoid this kind of issue, although I might be wrong.
(I personally know a test engineer who worked on it, so it's second person data for me.)