Failure to arrive at an industry standard has caught ultra-wideband technology players between bowing to standards pressures and customer demand.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics working group’s meeting, which ended Nov. 14, closed like the one held two months earlier-without the 75 percent votes required to reach a decision.
“The customers may have to vote with their actions,” said Omid Tahernia, vice president of strategy and business development of the wireless and mobile systems group at Motorola Inc.’s semiconductor division. Motorola just acquired XtremeSpectrum, which is one of the companies on its aisle of the UWB protocol divide. The group is proposing a single-band, direct-sequence CDMA system. Another group, led by Texas Instruments Inc. and Intel Corp., proposes a multi-band, frequency-hopping system. The group, which comprises more than 35 members, is known as the Multi-Band-OFDM Alliance.
The tally stood at 58 percent for the MBOA and 42 percent for Motorola/XSI group.
“The market is not going to wait for anyone,” said Steve Turner, business development manager at Texas Instruments, emphasizing the point that UWB players will have to provide for the needs of their customers. However, he stressed that TI would continue to work within the IEEE to fashion an industry protocol. He denied rumors that MBOA members are moving out of the IEEE.
According to a recent report by Parks Associates, industry expects UWB systems to exceed 150 million devices by the end of 2008. This will cover personal computers, interconnect solutions, the mobile computer enterprise space such as digital cameras and music players, as well as the electronics segment, including high-definition televisions, projectors and audio/visual receivers.
“The adoption of a widely accepted industry standard such as 802.11.15.3a is essential in matching UWB’s market reality to its very high expectations,” said Kurt Scherf, vice president of research at Parks Associates.
Tahernia said the snafu may lead to a de facto standard.
“We are about where we were in the last couple of months,’ said Turner. “Each side believes in the superiority of their technology.”
He said that at the beginning of the conference MBOA had 35 members, but it grew to “close to 40,” with marquee names like Nokia Corp. and Microsoft Corp. joining.
Tahernia said MBOA does not exactly have a sweeping majority, adding that a 42-percent vote for the Motorola/XSI position is significant.
Intel spokeswoman Kari Skoog said it promises to be a long process, but her company is still focused on working within the IEEE and at the Federal Communications Commission to reach a common platform. But, like TI, she adds her company will also pay attention to the market.
Prior to the previous meeting, the FCC said it would stay out of the fray and allow the IEEE to reach a standard, a decision that highlighted the complexity of the issue.
Turner said it plans to finalize what the MBOA calls the Version 1.0 of the draft specification of its UWB standard in May, which is “generating a lot of excitement” among its members, including chip makers, software developers and consumer electronics companies.
Tahernia said Motorola is working on the next-generation chipset that will support 500 megabits per second and it is scheduled for launch by the end of next year. The company last week acquired XtremeSpectrum as a move to take the technology to market, since XtremeSpectrum’s first-generation product is ready. Motorola can harness its resources and expertise into the market and “transform that to the market in the middle of next year,” said Tahernia.
The next meeting of the 802.15.3a group is set to take place in January in Vancouver, Canada.
Tahernia said Motorola is open to new ideas and has worked with Intel in the past few weeks to collaborate and demonstrate the products.
“We want to stay true to the standards process,” he said, noting that XtremeSpectrum announced recently it would provide its products royalty-free.
“We will continue to collaborate,” he stressed, “but we are carrying on with our technology and product implementation.”
MBOA says the Motorola/XSI’s direct sequence CDMA systems have interference issues, but Motorola denies it.
