Subject: [NEXTEL-1] UWB Launches a New Era in Home Consumer Electronics

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 16:26:05 -0400

UWB Launches a New Era in Home Consumer Electronics

By Steve Turner, Texas Instruments -- Electronic News, 5/14/2003

Ultra Wideband (UWB) is a fast-developing new
technology that will significantly improve the
consumer’s experience with home entertainment
products. Consumers are beginning to enjoy the
benefits of wireless technology with their home PCs
and laptops, but will soon see these benefits coming
to their entertainment products as well. UWB will
enable wireless connections at speeds of 110Mbit/sec. and greater, making it a
perfect fit for connecting televisions to DVD players and recorders, personal
video recorders (PVRs), and home audio equipment.

Every consumer can relate to the sight of a tangled mess of cables and wires
behind their television, and the frustration of hooking up new home
entertainment equipment. Most have experienced the confusion of determining
which of the many connections and cables to use, and then trying to hide all
the cables in what is usually a limited space. Instead, picture bringing home a
new DVD recorder, plugging in the power cord, turning the unit on, then just
sitting back for a few minutes while the unit effortlessly establishes a
permanent wireless connection to the TV and audio equipment.

While there are almost an unlimited number of applications for UWB, it’s clear
that the need for such a wireless solution is most current and pressing in the
home consumer electronics area. A massive upgrade cycle is already under
way as consumers upgrade to HDTVs and flat-panel televisions. They’ve seen
the commercials showing sleek flat-panel monitors hanging on living room
walls, but these commercials usually don’t show three or four cables running
down the wall below them. UWB will eliminate all the cables connecting to set
top boxes and DVDs (alas, the power cord will still be there until the day when
someone figures out how to provide wireless power…). UWB is not another
technology in search of a solution; it’s a solution to a need that exists today.

UWB also promises to meet other important needs of the home consumer.
Both cable and satellite providers are rolling out more and more high definition
broadcasts, which typically require about five times the throughput of standard
definition signals. With 110Mbit/sec. data-rate capability and a range of 10
meters, only UWB will be able to stream multiple high-definition video streams
wirelessly from a set top box to television monitors throughout most of the
home. This could provide the consumer with the ability to have more televisions
in the home accessible to the primary source of high-definition content, without
necessarily adding a new set top box for each television.

There are certainly other home entertainment products that will benefit from
“cutting the cord.” Game consoles and products that typically use front-panel
connectors, such as digital video camcorders, are great examples where the
consumer’s life is made easier with a wireless connection. UWB will also
eventually meet the low power requirements of hand-held electronics like MP3
players and PDAs, and most importantly will provide the low-cost solution
necessary for wide consumer adoption.

Becoming the primary interconnect of a home entertainment system also
means providing an extremely high signal quality. While applications such as
wireless transfers of files in PC applications can live with temporary drops in
throughput, wireless transmission to a TV display cannot, or consumers will
reject the technology outright. UWB will provide the required high quality signal.
It will also be robust in a high-traffic area like a living room, maintaining high
picture quality even when the dog wanders between the camcorder and the TV.
And UWB-enabled products will also be able to perform virtually flawlessly
wherever the consumer places them within the 10 meter range, whether or not
there is a direct line of sight from the source to the display.

Finally there’s the need for UWB to peacefully coexist with other wireless
products in the home, such as Wi-Fi home networks and cordless phones.
Some of these applications operate in the same bandwidth allocated to UWB
by the FCC, so the developing standard for UWB will ensure that the consumer
doesn’t have to worry about whether the purchase of a new UWB-equipped
television will interfere with those other wireless products. The true proof of
user-friendliness of all these products will be that consumers don’t even need to
pay attention to whether they are UWB, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth. Each of these
technologies will be the natural solution for a certain class of wireless products
in the home and will co-exist seamlessly, with consumers never needing to
concern themselves with which “802.what?” standard they represent.

UWB clearly presents the vision of a simpler era for home electronics. Industry
must collectively fulfill the promise of UWB, by delivering a standard and a
technology that will simplify the life of the home electronics consumer in the
future, when they’ll be choosing from an even greater variety of product features
and options than they have today.

http://www.e-insite.net/electronicnews/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA298839&stt=000&industryid=21376&industry=Wireless

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