From: Monty Solomon <monty@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 27, 2004 11:04:32 PM PDT
Subject: The next big thing is actually ultrawide / But technology
hampered by regulatory hurdles, a clash over standards
The next big thing is actually ultrawide
But technology hampered by regulatory hurdles, a clash over standards
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | June 25, 2004
The space shuttle videos looked almost better than the real thing.
They were high-definition videos, on display earlier this month at
the Sheraton Boston Hotel. And though there's nothing unusual these
days about high-definition television, these two videos came from an
unusual source -- a laptop computer in one corner of a medium-sized
conference room.
The laptop was plugged into a black box bearing two small antennas;
similar boxes were plugged into the HDTV monitors. The result was a
wireless network powerful enough to broadcast two different
high-definition videos simultaneously, with enough leftover capacity
to handle a third channel.
Those black boxes were built by Freescale Semiconductor, a division
of Motorola Corp. The microchips inside them can pump out 110 million
bits of data per second -- twice as much as the fastest WiFi wireless
networking equipment now on the market. And that's just the
beginning. Before the year's out, Freescale will be making chips that
run twice as fast; by next year, it plans to offer a slice of silicon
that will broadcast wireless data at one billion bits per second.
Freescale is one of the leaders in a new kind of digital technology
called "ultrawideband" that's being described as the next big
consumer wireless technology, thanks to its ability to pump out
massive amounts of data. But even though some ultrawideband devices
will come to market this year, the technology is still hobbled by
regulatory challenges and a long-running clash between two
incompatible ultrawideband systems. According to Bob Heile, the
Attleboro physicist who leads a wireless standards-setting committee
for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE),
"Right now, it's 10 percent technology and 90 percent politics."
Most radio devices send out a signal over a narrow band of
frequencies. For example, WiFi data networks use a small set of
frequencies in the 2.4 gigahertz range. But ultrawideband works by
broadcasting over a much larger chunk of the radio spectrum -- from
3.1 to 10.5 gigahertz -- all at the same time. As a result, even a
low-powered ultrawideband radio signal can carry huge amounts of data.
Ultrawideband technology has other powerful attributes. Because the
signal can penetrate solid objects, police forces and armies use the
technology in radar systems that can see through walls. The precise
digital pulses of an ultrawideband radio make it possible to locate a
transmitter with an accuracy of a few inches, so automakers are
working on ultrawideband detectors that can spot oncoming cars and
prevent collisions.
....
<http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2004/06/25/
the_next_big_thing_is_actually_ultrawide/>