If you've been watching the chess game over ultrawideband standards sit stalemated for the last nine months, then you can really appreciate Intel's bold move to anoint the proposed multiband orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing implementation as the foundation for wireless USB.
By leveraging the potential for hundreds of millions of wireless USB connections in PCs and peripherals alone, Intel-along with Texas Instruments and other multiband proponents-effectively snatched the power to decide the UWB standard from the IEEE.
Only now is there movement toward a unified standard within the 802.13a task group, the standards-setting body for UWB within the IEEE. Unfortunately, it comes too late: The coalition backing the multiband proposal has already abandoned the process in favor of the wireless USB approach.
Intel's move seemed heavy-handed: It came as a blow not only to the IEEE but to the entire standards-setting process. By the same token, it had become clear that, once again, the standards-by-committee method was failing.
So what else to do?
Certainly, something had to give. The working group last summer whittled the proposals down to just two-the unified multiband OFDM proposal and a competing offering from Motorola and Xtreme Spectrum (which Motorola later bought outright). But several meetings and many months later, we were still left with the same two proposals.
A lot is at stake, to be sure. With the promise of very high data rates over short distances, many anticipate UWB will replace cables for a wide variety of devices, from PCs and printers to cameras, camcorders and even television displays and set-top boxes.
Without a standard interface, though, the technology will forever be mired as a niche feature, with manufacturers offeringproprietary implementations to connect their own consumer electronics hardware.
In the meantime, the delay in a unified UWB standard has helped competing technologies gain steam in the race to streamline or eliminate the growing hornet's nest of wiring behind the entertainment center and in the study. The High-Definition Multimedia Interface, for example, is slowly gaining acceptance as a wired option, as is 1394. And consumer electronics manufacturers are increasingly looking to 802.11 as a wireless connection.
Heavy-handed? Sure. It's the standard knee-jerk reaction when an 800-pound gorilla tramples a communal work-in-progress, as Intel did to the 802.13a task group. But in doing so, Intel just may have saved UWB from irrelevance.
Nice move, you've got to admit.
Mike Feibus is principal analyst at TechKnowledge Strategies Inc., a market research firm in Scottsdale, Ariz., that focuses on components for mobile systems. Reach him at mike@techknowledge-group.com.
