October 27, 2005
UWB to replace WiFi?
Ultrawideband Challenges Wi-Fi In Fight For Wireless Consumers
Wi-Fi is a popular way for home broadband users to share Internet connections and, more and more, other consumer electronics wares.
An emerging wireless technology, ultrawideband, also targets consumer electronics and is starting to appear in some products.
The company with the biggest stake is UWB’s main champion, Freescale Semiconductor. It sells chips that run UWB gear and UWB-equipped products. It says UWB can do most everything Wi-Fi can do, only better.
To this, I apply the “have I heard of it” test. I’m an electrical engineer, and I work in the computer industry. I have never heard of UWB. Therefore, it’s not going to catch on 
In all seriousness, though, emerging technologies need a couple of things to succeed in this sort of environment. They either have to enter a market that is largely empty, or they need to do a much better job what their competitor does, and they must be an open standard. All three are against UWB.
UWB has some advantages over Wi-Fi. UWB sends data twice as fast as Wi-Fi, guaranteeing quality for HDTV transmission, for example. For now, Wi-Fi can result in a jerky, lower-quality transmission for high-definition TV.
“Wi-Fi cannot ensure the quality of service of the digital stream,” said Rofheart.
It’s also, for several technical reasons, easier for users to set up UWB than Wi-Fi.
But UWB has limits. It doesn’t work well in sending signals around corners or through dense material such as brick. Wi-Fi can handle corners and some material.
Also, a user’s Internet-connected PC or other device must be within 80 feet or so of a UWB node, or the gear that provides the transmission. Wi-Fi’s range is 300 feet.
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And a new version of Wi-Fi, known by the technical name 802.11n, is in the works. It’s twice as fast as today’s fastest Wi-Fi, 802.11g, and roughly comparable to UWB speed.
Recently, 27 companies banded together to offer a final 802.11n proposal to the technical standards body for wireless networking. The firms include Intel, Cisco Systems and Sony.
UWB is still mired in the standards process. Freescale supports one type of UWB standard. Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Philips Electronics and Samsung support a different standard.
This reminds me of a standard that was all the rage a few years ago, and has mostly fallen out of use: Firewire. Firewire was similar to USB, but was much, much faster, and could handle the demands of high-bandwidth applications like external hard drives, video devices, etc. But then USB 2.0 arrived, and had all the speed of Firewire with the addition of backward and forward compatibility to earlier versions of USB. Firewire is now going the way of Betamax.
What killed Firewire? Nothing really, it’s a great technology. But all it was able to do was to find a niche market where it beat USB, but not enough market share to replace USB. Once USB 2.0 made its way into the market, all of Firewire’s advantages disappeared.
This is what is happening to UWB. It is faster and has some advantages over WiFi, even the fastest of 802.11g systems. It’s already here, which helps even more. But WiFi 802.11n will have backward compatibility to all previous 802.11 standards. If you replace your current wireless router in your house with an 802.11n router, you don’t need to reconfigure your existing hardware to work with it.
In the technology world, to usurp a ubiquitous technology like USB or WiFi, you need something tremendously attractive. USB replaced serial (RS-232) with the advantages of speed, hot-swappability, and carrying power over the interface. WiFi entered an empty space in the market, and sat down to be the 800-lb gorilla. To unseat either will not be possible with steps towards progress, you’re going to need giant leaps.
Just remember, before you spend your hard-earned money on the Next Big ThingTM, you want to make sure it’s going to make inroads into the market. And if I’ve never heard of UWB, you probably don’t need to pay any attention to it.
rgcombs.blog-city.com linked with Don't write off UWB
Eric's Grumbles Before The Grave linked with Here's The Best Example
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Here’s The Best Example
Brad, the Unrepentant Individual, has an entry on WiFi and another wireless standard called Ultra Wide Band, or UWB. Interestingly, and I’m in the IT industry, I haven’t heard of UWB. Now, UWB’s supporters apparently want to challenge WiFi for…
Don’t write off UWB
Eric at Eric’s Grumbles and Brad at The Unrepentant Individual both dismissed ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless technology recently, and I think they’re both probably wrong because they’re viewing it from the wrong perspective. Eric began by noting …