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Wireless Networking Technology Hardware

Ultra-Wide Band And Bluetooth Working Together 71

Posted by Zonk from the its-so-nice-to-see-protocols-getting-along dept.
judgecorp writes "This week the Bluetooth people adopted UWB as a future fast connection. What not many people have spotted is - the big winner in this could be UWB.. Sure, Bluetooth is a slow protocol for headsets, and UWB is, potentially, much much more. But Bluetooth is established. It's in phones and regulators understand it. If Bluetooth likes UWB, that could really be a major factor to convince the people that are blocking UWB - operators and regulators outside the US - that UWB is safe to use."
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Ultra-Wide Band And Bluetooth Working Together More

Ultra-Wide Band And Bluetooth Working Together

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  • Naming inflation (Score:5, Funny)

    by JPelorat ( 5320 ) * on Friday May 06, 2005 @04:13PM (#12456159)
    Heh. They're expanding the descriptors too fast.. we went straight from broadband to ultrawideband. What's next, megahugeband? Kinda running out of options after that. What happened to moderation? Something like broaderband.

    Starts getting ridiculous after that: superultrawideband, hyperbroadband, megabroadwidebroadband... uberband? Guess we could move on to Roseanneband, or Kirstieband.

    Or maybe we could just skip all that and go straight to plaidband.

  • So why don't people like this again? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Interference?

    Does it actually cause interference?

  • was on Ars... (Score:4, Informative)

    by *SECADM ( 223955 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @04:27PM (#12456349)
    a couple days ago. [arstechnica.com]

    UWB has been the latest buzz for a while. Reminded me when I, Cringely was all over it [pbs.org] making it out to be the next big thing. That was in 2002 though. Time will tell....

    • I wonder how much technology adoption has to do with when things get lots of press relative to the product design cycle. If something is new at a time when not many products are in the planning phase, it might stand less of a chance at immediate adoption than if it's really on people's radar screens when they're planning.

      Time will tell if it's the next big thing. With nothing against UWB though, it's worth noting that for every 50 new technologies with "buzz" behind them, 1 or 2 of them end up being "the

    • Re:was on Ars... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Moby Cock ( 771358 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @06:14PM (#12457729) Homepage
      The last major hurdle with UWB is designing an antenna that is capable of handling the 7 GHZ of bandwidth. Obviously any resonance-type antenna just won't cut the mustard. Existing bradband antennas are generally large and, for the most part, not planar. The focus now is to creat plar (or easily integratable) antennas with appropriate BW. Its proving to be a real bitch of a problem.

      The other part of it is that the antenna gain needs to be constant over the whold BW otherwise the antenna tends to add a tranfer function to the pulses being transmitted. This can be compensated for in the RF front end, but the ideal would be an antenna with constant gain.

      A lot of papers have come out in the last little while. It won't be long until some solid designs are in production. That will open up the applications a lot.

  • UWB - what is it ? (Score:2, Informative)

    by karvind ( 833059 )
    UWB

    The term "ultra wideband" is a relatively new term to describe a technology which had been known since the early 1960's as "carrier-free", "baseband" or "impulse" technology. The basic concept is to develop, transmit and receive an extremely short duration burst of radio frequency (RF) energy - typically a few tens of picoseconds (trillionths of a second) to a few nanoseconds (billionths of a second) in duration. These bursts represent from one to only a few cycles of an RF carrier wave. The resultant w

  • Usefull up close (Score:3, Funny)

    by goneutt ( 694223 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @04:27PM (#12456363) Journal
    A quick read of the first article mentions that this is intended for distances of 2-4 meters. That would make it great for improved headsets. PDA's, MP3 Players, and cellphone viruses should also benefit.
    • Only 2-4 meters? I'm able to get about 5-20 meters with my headset now depending on line of site. I think the range for this new technology should be at least far enough that you can use a wireless device around your house without having to carry the phone with you.
  • to convince the people that are blocking UWB - operators and regulators outside the US - that UWB is safe to use.

    Expect a /. story saying "UWB approved despites international security warnings" in a year or so.
  • Bluetooth is dying, and good riddance. In a year we will use WLAN-enabled phones and accessories, with no reduction in battery time.

    There's a prototype b/g chip for phones which uses less power than bluetooth in standby and just a little more when active.
    • Now please explain to me why I want my headset to use a WLAN to talk to my phone? Why I want my Keyboard & Mouse to use the WLAN to move a cursor on my screen?

      Sounds like a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem.

      • Bluetooth isn't really a WLAN technology, it was meant for wireless personal area networks, like using wireless headsets with phones and wireless keyboards with computers. Its transcievers are much rather inexpensive and it is short range & low power. It is a much more general idea than, for example, WIFI, which was specifically for LAN applications.

  • Ultra Wide Tooth (Score:3, Informative)

    by Megamote ( 688718 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @05:19PM (#12457083)
    UWB's combination of broader spectrum and lower power improves speed and reduces interference with other wireless spectra. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has mandated that UWB radio transmissions can legally operate in the range from 3.1 GHz up to 10.6 GHz, at a limited transmit power of -41dBm/MHz. Consequently, UWB provides dramatic channel capacity at short range that limits interference. When used as intended, the emerging short- and medium-range wireless standards vary widely in their implicit spatial capacities. For example: IEEE 802.11b has a rated operating range of 100 meters. In the 2.4GHz ISM band, there is about 80MHz of useable spectrum. Hence, in a circle with a radius of 100 meters, three 22MHz IEEE 802.11b systems can operate on a non-interfering basis, each offering a peak over-the-air speed of 11Mbps. The total aggregate speed of 33Mbps, divided by the area of the circle, yields a spatial capacity of approximately 1,000 bits/sec/square-meter. Bluetooth, in its low-power mode, has a rated 10-meter range and a peak over-the-air speed of 1Mbps. Studies have shown that approximately 10 Bluetooth "piconets" can operate simultaneously in the same 10-meter circle with minimal degradation yielding an aggregate speed of 10Mbps [3]. Dividing this speed by the area of the circle produces a spatial capacity of approximately 30,000 bits/sec/square-meter. IEEE 802.11a is projected to have an operating range of 50 meters and a peak speed of 54Mbps. Given the 200MHz of available spectrum within the lower part of the 5GHz U-NII band, 12 such systems can operate simultaneously within a 50-meter circle with minimal degradation, for an aggregate speed of 648Mbps. The projected spatial capacity of this system is therefore approximately 83,000 bits/sec/square-meter. UWB systems vary widely in their projected capabilities, but one UWB technology developer has measured peak speeds of over 50Mbps at a range of 10 meters and projects that six such systems could operate within the same 10-meter radius circle with only minimal degradation. Following the same procedure, the projected spatial capacity for this system would be over 1,000,000 bits/sec/square-meter.

  • Question (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bersl2 ( 689221 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @05:41PM (#12457349) Journal
    What happened to Wireless USB? Bluetooth was supposed to by dying because it was going to be accepted better by the market because of the USB association. What did I miss?

    • Re:Question (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      UWB is the physically layer and has been designed to take multiple link layers- USB, IEEE1394 and IP. More information can be found at
      http://www.multibandofdm.org/ [multibandofdm.org]
      http://www.usb.org/wusb/home [usb.org]
    • Bluetooth operates on both low level as relatively high level (application level). This gives it an distinct advantage over other technologies like WiFi, Wireless USB etc. etc. Furthermore, it is relatively cheap to implement, and does not take much power. WiFi headphones, for example, would take too much energy, and would have to operate on a specific protol on top of the default Ethernet or TCP/IP. And they would be more expensive as well.

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