Technology news and Jobs 
Telecommunications Siemens touts ultra-wideband for home content distribution
Telecommunications Siemens touts ultra-wideband for home content distribution | Siemens touts ultra-wideband for home content distribution |
|
| by Stuart Corner | |
| Tuesday, 07 November 2006 | |
  
Featured Whitepaper
5 Best Practices for Smartphone Support
The technology, claimed to deliver transmission speeds of up to 480Mbps, made its debut at the TelcoTV show in Dallas, Texas November 6-8, 2006. The first products from the collaboration are expected to be available by the end of 2006. "The performance characteristics of ultra-wideband solutions - including very robust data rates, built-in quality-of-service measures, and low power emissions - makes it a viable candidate for solutions that cross a wide spectrum of PC, consumer electronics, and mobile and portable devices," said Kurt Scherf, vice president and principal analyst with Parks Associates, quoted in a Siemens press release. "Given its fit in a variety of markets, we will expect to see greater uptake of its use in the very near future." Tzero, billed as "a leading supplier of UWB solutions, already supplies UWB technology to connect a range of audio-visual components: displays, set-top boxes, digital video recorders, media centre PCs, residential gateways. It claims its technology is based on standards from the WiMedia Alliance and therefore "guaranteed to co-exist with other WiMedia-compliant devices." Tzero was founded in 2003 and is backed by tier-one venture partners, including August Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Miven Venture Partners, OVP, USVP and VentureTech Alliance. Tzero is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. iTWire reported recently on the wireless v BPL debate for home content distribution. Since then LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric (Panasonic), NEC, Samsung, Sibeam, Sony and Toshiba have formed a special interest group, WiHD to develop wireless technology to enable high-definition audio video streaming and high-speed content transmission between consumer electronics devices. Other potential technologies are also emerging: In May 2005 The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) announced its intent to work with the developers of ultra-wideband technology to combine strengths of both technologies. In October 2005 Freescale Semiconductor staged the first demonstration of a device based on its chipsets that supports communication that used the Bluetooth protocol stack in both Bluetooth and UWB communications. According to Greg Burns, CTO for Open Interface North America "Bluetooth's core strengths are ad-hoc connectivity and its portfolio of profiles. Put these together the right way with UWB's high data rate capabilities and you've got an unbeatable high-speed data exchange system for wireless consumer products." Ultra-wideband technology uses very low power signals spread across a wide range of frequencies used for other purposes. The aim is that the power level is too low to cause interference, but this has not been fully tested. The ACMA is still examining licence UWB in Australia and issued a discussion paper in January 2006.{moscomment} |
Tags
| < Next story in category | Previous story in the category > |
|---|
