Members of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) said they will
consult with Ultrawideband (UWB) developers to evaluate how the two
technologies can improve data transfers between PCs, phones and consumer electronics equipment.
The groups said the goal is
to work toward an architecture that lets devices take advantage of UWB
data rates (between 40 to 60 megabits per second and eventually up to 1
gigabit per second) for scenarios that require high speeds. They expect Bluetooth to remain the de-facto standard for lower data-rate needs and
act as a backward-compatible link with existing devices.
“The downside is that backwards compatibility will be limited,” said
Dan Benjamin, a senior analyst with IT consultancy ABI Research.
“Bluetooth implementing UWB could serve to limit interest in wireless
USB, which also uses UWB as an air interface and targets a similar
market, but is still very much unsettled with regard to software and
authentication.”
The other concern by analysts like Benjamin is that UWB comes with a
lot of baggage in the form of competing standards and legislative
issues.
The Intel-backed WiMedia Alliance is currently at odds with the
Freescale/Motorola-funded UWB Forum. The groups formed after a split
took place in the IEEE 802.15.3a Task Group in early 2004 when the
MultiBand OFDM Alliance Special Interest Group (MBOA-SIG) left, blaming
Motorola for preventing MBOA from getting the 75 percent vote needed to
become the standard. MBOA-SIG later joined
the WiMedia Alliance, which added Microsoft to its ranks last week.
While the Federal Communications Commission gave its approval to the
WiMedia Alliance earlier this year to sell UWB wireless
products in the United States, the FCC has been concerned about handing
out waivers for a technology that uses a wide variety of spectrum in
short bursts.
“Theoretically, you could use UWB over long distances, which would
interfere with other wireless bands and raise a red flag over at the
FCC,” Benjamin said.
ABI Research has touted UWB as a disruptive
technology, and projects that worldwide shipments of UWB-enabled devices
by 2009 could be as high as 315 million units.
Both the Bluetooth SIG and the UWB camps acknowledged the fundamental
issues of UWB will need to be resolved before bringing products to the
global market. The groups said interference issues for Wireless LAN,
WiMAX and new Cellular bands, in addition to the lack of a worldwide
spectrum allocation for UWB, are on the agenda for discussion.
Still, the Bluetooth group said the partnership helps extend its
long-term roadmap and keep up with consumer requests for high-speed data
transfer, as well as demands for high-quality video on portable devices.
“I feel that it is the responsibility of the industry to recognize
synergies and limit fragmentation as much as possible,” Michael Foley,
executive director of the Bluetooth SIG, said in a statement. “Not only is it a requirement that worldwide regulation is achieved, but also that it is done in a way so co-existence with future mobile standards is realized.”
The UWB group said it would benefit from working with Bluetooth
primarily because there are only a handful of unofficial UWB products on
the market, but also because Bluetooth is a mature technology with
hundreds of developers and brand acceptance.
UWB’s fast speed is accompanied by a very short distance (around 10
meters) compared to Wi-Fi, which is relatively long range in comparison
but tops out at around 54Mbps under 802.11a or 11g.
UWB could be moot in a few years if the high-speed
802.11n specification currently being worked on turns out to be as
popular as other Wi-Fi flavors are today. However, two camps in the IEEE
802.11 Task Group N are also campaigning to have their technology become
the basis for that standard. Both sides say they want to avoid a
UWB-style split.
