UWB ready to hit market in 2006

Next month’s International CES show in Las Vegas should mark a turning point for ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless technology as vendors move out of experimentation and into real product development.

Alereon, a fabless semiconductor company, will be at the show with a number of partners demonstrating the ability to connect multiple PC peripherals and other devices in a home network.

“What you’re going to see is a demonstration of this technology really maturing to the point that products begin to appear in 2006,” said Jim Robilard, director of product marketing for Alereon. “Last year was a demonstration of technology; this year is more of a productization of that technology.”

UWB, which operates anywhere from 3.1 GHz up to 10.6 GHz at very low power, is becoming increasingly important to carriers as they roll out triple play services that will include home networking. However, the market currently appears to be developing along two tracks, Robilard said.

“One is video streaming or IP connectivity,” he said.. “There, the thinking is UWB can deliver a lot of bandwidth. The other area is UWB being very efficient at delivering lot of bandwidth as it relates to the amount of power it uses. In that form it comes to market as wireless [universal serial bus].”

Alereon is of the belief that the latter will develop first. In the former application, however, it could be used to connect IP set-top boxes to a DSL router. Currently most carriers deploying IPTV service are using technology from either the MoCA alliance or Coaxsys to reach IP set-tops or are wiring homes with category 5 Ethernet cable. The goal of several startups is develop a wireless technology that can handle both the bandwidth and security requirements.

“I don’t see much of an intersection of competition with other wireless technology,” Robilard said. “802.11 is a very complementary technology.”