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By Suzanne Deffree -- Electronic News, 12/28/2004
The long sought after dream of the digitally connected home will have the best chance yet in 2005, thanks to some wireless technologies coming of age.
Both Ultra Wideband (UWB) and the latest member of the 802.11 family are expected on shelves next year, with speeds fast enough to distribute data in the home. Depending on how 2005 plays out, consumers could see a world without wires, streaming HDTV and video, sooner than the industry may have thought.
Ultra Wideband
UWB runs at low power, but also low range, covering around 230 feet, similar area to Bluetooth. Speeds for UWB are expected to top out around 480/Mbits/sec., but fall when the distance between the base and appliance increases. For that reason, UWB is seen as more of a short range connector, to first be implemented in printers, desktops or consumer electronics within the same room. But the technology, which has been in the IEEE now for more than two years and is still without a standard, is not hampered by its range. Instead, it has been hampered by competition.
Two groups face off in the IEEE for a UWB standard: the Multiband OFDM Alliance (MBOA), including the likes of Intel, Philips and Samsung; and the Ultra Wideband Forum, a group that includes CoWare and Freescale and is pushing direct sequence UWB. Neither group is willing to bend, according to Phil Solis, a senior analyst at ABI Research, and that could be a problem as products begin to populate shelves in 2005.
"You are going to see some early products coming out with Ultra Wideband. And unfortunately, it looks like there is going to be two different Ultra Wideband technologies. One by the MBOA and one by the Ultra Wideband Forum," he said. "The unfortunate thing there is that consumers will be stuck finding out the hard way, by accident, that some of these products aren't really compatible. Most likely they will be branded differently, but if they both use the terminology 'Ultra Wideband' consumers are going to get stuck with incompatible products."
On the side of the Forum, Freescale announced in September that it had begun commercial shipments of an 110Mbits/sec. UWB chipset.
Further UWB announcements and high-speed demonstrations from MBOA are expected at next week's Consumer Electronics Show, said Paul Marino, VP and general manager of connectivity at Philips, an MBOA supporter. Like Solis, he believes there may not be industry-wide acceptance of one standard and interoperability issues will exist.
"But in the long run the consumer will decide which one will win," Marino said, noting the old VHS vs. Beta arguments. "When the various vendors cannot agree amongst themselves, the consumers will decide."
Next-Generation 802.11
What the industry is less argumentative about is the next generation of 802.11, 802.11n. This wireless LAN follow-up to 802.11g runs at 100Mbit/sec. minimum throughput and works with MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) technology, in which multiple antennas are used at both the transmitter and the receiver to speed data flow. Unlike UWB, it does not work at low power, but it does have greater range, expected to cover the average home.
Again, two groups face off in the IEEE for a full-fledged 802.11n standard, which is expected to be ratified some time in 2006. In this instance, however, both groups seem willing to compromise.
"The contract between what's happening in n and what's happening in UWB is fairly dramatic," Jeff Abramowitz, senior director of marketing for Broadcom's home and wireless networking business unit, remarked. "You really had two very different technologies and so you had religion about those two technologies. In this case, what you have are just shades of grey on what is essentially a very similar proposals. We're optimistic."
ABI Research's Solis expects 802.11n to follow a similar appearance pattern as 802.11g did. Products based on 802.11g began to show in stores before final ratification of the standard, but after a final draft of the standard have been drawn out by the IEEE. Broadcom capitalized on that option and took an early lead in the space. This time around, pre-802.11n products are already out from the likes of Belkin, with Solis expecting a more massive approach in late 2005.
"As you get closer to the end of 2005, some of these MIMO solutions might be more worthy of being called pre-802.11n," he said. "The standard will be a little bit more developed so there will be a draft to base the technology on. Usually when you base a technology on a draft, you have it mostly tuned to what the standard will be and some minor changes can be made by updating the firmware, for example."
UWB vs. 802.11n
Meanwhile, experts agree that the two wireless technologies will not be in direct competition. 802.11n, which will arrive in the home with predetermined consumer confidence because of its 802.11 predecessors, and standard-challenged UWB will target different applications – 802.11n for local area networks and UWB for personal area networks, Marino said.
"We actually see them as complementary, in so much that the wired Ethernet and the wired USB were complementary or how the current 802.11 and Bluetooth are complementary."
He continued: "As always, there are areas of overlap. We have a clear and distant view that the 802.11 should serve as the backbone of the wireless home, where as UWB will serve personal area networks, like in-room."
2005 Lays the Foundation
Much like a builder lays the foundation for a home, then waits while its sets, 2005 will lay the foundation for the digital home of the future, and the industry will wait while it sets. While UWB is still working out its standard issues and 802.11n readies for its 2006 ratification, the year will be used to promote the technologies to the consumer and gain their confidence, Marino concluded.
"It will be the big year for awareness. I would like to caution that a new standard and new technologies do not happen from today to tomorrow. It took the original 802.11 almost a decade and Bluetooth a little less than that, so there is a timeline.
"It is always a process of education, creating a consumer experience of what the technology is capable of," he said. "It will all depend on if the creators of the technology make the same mistake again of over promising and under delivering."
