WAIKOLOA, Hawaii-The IEEE ultrawideband (UWB) task group ended three years of acrimony with a nearly unanimous vote to kill the 802.15.3a proposed standard.
The association, which was established to develop a standard for short-range wireless communications at up to 480 megabits per second, disbanded after consistently failing to achieve a 75-percent consensus on two competing proposals. The group’s two camps-the direct-sequence backer UWB Forum and the WiMediaT Alliance, which supports MultiBand Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing UWB-said they will continue to move UWB into the market.
“We concur that, at this stage in UWB market development, a more prudent course of action is necessary to allow the market to move forward with the commercialization of multiple UWB technologies,” the factions said in a joint statement.
UWB is expected to be an attractive platform for converging home applications, particularly video, and has gained the support of major semiconductor manufacturers in the consumer electronics space. The technology has also been tested in mobile phones. But competition between the two competing camps is likely to heat up now that they will work toward different UWB standards.
“With the battle line drawn between the two standards camps, we will now be able to totally focus our energy on creating products that are useful and beneficial to consumers, ultimately allowing the market to determine the technologies they find most convenient and useful,” said Eric Broockman, chief executive officer of Alereon, Inc., a WiMedia backer. “This should be an interesting battle to watch.”
Broockman noted that such developments are not unprecedented in wireless among alliances backing competing standards.
“Bluetooth technology was brought to fruition in much the same way-independent groups worked to create competing standards solutions and the market decided which version was the strongest,” he said.
