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.

Comments

I haven't heard about UWB in a while but.....

[ZosX]

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."

UWB Was Destined To Die

[loose electron]

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.