Fergie's Tech Blog

IEEE chair warns of UWB red-tape death

Several good articles on TechWorld.com this morning -- among them, this one by Peter Judge:

New doubts have been raised over the future of ultra-wide band (UWB), by the chair of the group creating a standard for the fast networking technology.

If Europe and Asia apply more restrictions to the technology than the FCC in the US, the technology may not perform well enough to displace Wi-Fi, which is constantly improving, said Bob Heile, chair of the IEEE 802.15.3a working group.

"I believe we will see regulations in Europe that are substantially more restrictive than those applied by the FCC," said Heile, in France for a conference on the ZigBee sensor protocol. "Japan is likely to be even more conservative. If that happens, how good is the performance going to be?"

Stiff regulations would limit UWB to a smaller slice of spectrum, and reduce its speed and range. It would then have more trouble competing against faster versions of Wi-Fi. In two years' time, 802.11n will be established, with a theoretical limit of 110 to 200Mbit/s. "By the time you put in overhead factors, that's 45Mbit/s or throughput," he explained. Although UWB should have 480Mbit/s at short ranges, it would drop off with distance - particularly if the regulations limit the spectrum it can use. "By the time you've gone across a room, the data rate could be more like 802.11n."

posted by Fergie @ 5/16/2005 06:38:00 AM