SAN JOSE, Calif. — The market, not IEEE standards bodies or government regulators, will have to sort out a standard for ultrawideband technology, said backers of competing approaches at the Bluetooth Americas conference here Thursday (Dec. 11).
Meanwhile an official from the Federal Communications Commission said regulators are gearing up for new rulings that could give the low power, high data rate wireless technology a boost.
Backers of multiband OFDM and direct sequence CDMA variants of UWB have been locked in a standards war in the IEEE 802.15.3a committee. The stalemate will probably last another 12 months, far beyond the group's next meeting in January in Vancouver, predicted Bob Heile, who heads that committee.
"We'll be deadlocked again in Vancouver unless something really unusual happens like one side just doesn't show up. There's no substantive information that is going to change anyone's mind at this point. I think we'll just need to get experience in the marketplace," said Heile in an interview with EE Times.
Indeed, Heile's company, Appairant Technologies Inc. (Attleboro, Mass.), plans to ship "at least three non-standard UWB modules" in the coming year, he added.
"The deadlock is really saying we don't have the information we need to make an intelligent decision. The marketplace needs to see these solutions. Right now we are debating about Powerpoint slides and simulations," he added.
In the next year, products from both camps should start to emerge and go through FCC compliance testing and OEM qualifications. Meanwhile, regulators in Korea and Japan-and possibly Europe-may make initial rulings on UWB use in their geographies.
"We haven't got a global market yet for UWB, but by the end of 2004 we should be in a position to finalize a kick-ass standard. Once you get started drafting something, it can get wrapped up in four months," said Heile.
Both Motorola, which recently acquired Xtreme Spectrum, and General Atomics are expected to ship DS-CDMA UWB chips in 2004. The Multiband OFDM Alliance said it expects to finish its spec by May and sample products by the end of 2004. UWB chips could initially cost $15-20 and eventually fall to $5-7, according to some proponents.
"Rather than a meaningless debate in a dark conference room we will have a meaningful standard vetted by the marketplace," said Martin Rofheart, director of UWB at Motorola and formerly chief executive of Xtreme (Vienna, Va.).
Earlier this year, the FCC refused to get involved in the debate when DS-CDMA backers asked regulators to rule on whether the multiband OFDM approach's use of frequency hopping violated FCC rules on interference.
"We had an opportunity to participate in that war and we declined. The FCC doesn't want to pick winners or losers or take a seat at the standards table," said Alan Scrime, chief of the policy and rules division in the FCC's office of engineering and technology in a presentation here.
"It's a measurement issue. If the FCC would have made a ruling it would have been like picking a technology," Scrime added.
Nevertheless, Scrime was very bullish on the potential of UWB and indicated an upcoming ruling on so-called cognitive radio could give UWB a big boost. The notice of proposed ruling, which could come in the next few months or even weeks, will set out a few application areas for testing a capability to intelligently use available parcels of spectrum for a limited time. The technology is derived from work in software-defined radio.
"UWB has the potential to catapult wireless into the mainstream, but it needs other pieces. If you couple this [cognitive radio] capability with UWB it could be very powerful," said Scrime, although he would not provide details on the pending ruling.
Heile said he thinks the cognitive radio technology will take time before it has commercial impact. "This is stuff that may be 15 years in the future," he said.
Separately, Scrime said the FCC has taken measurements that show everyday devices such as PCs and electric drills already violate limits the FCC has set on UWB for non-interference with Global Positioning System technology. Those measurements have encouraged regulators they may be able to loosen restrictions put on UWB in a February 2002 ruling. However, no ruling on the matter will be immediately forthcoming.
"We have anecdotal evidence that the limits we have set might be artificially low. However we have no agreement from the [military] side [that the limits are too low], and they are doing their own tests," Scrime said.
In any case, "chip makers have now asked us not to change our regulations until they have had the time to recoup their investments on their first generation parts," he added.
