The next big thing is actually ultrawide But technology hampered by regulatory hurdles, a clash over standards By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | June 25, 2004 The space shuttle videos looked almost better than the real thing. They were high-definition videos, on display earlier this month at the Sheraton Boston Hotel. And though there's nothing unusual these days about high-definition television, these two videos came from an unusual source -- a laptop computer in one corner of a medium-sized conference room. The laptop was plugged into a black box bearing two small antennas; similar boxes were plugged into the HDTV monitors. The result was a wireless network powerful enough to broadcast two different high-definition videos simultaneously, with enough leftover capacity to handle a third channel. Those black boxes were built by Freescale Semiconductor, a division of Motorola Corp. The microchips inside them can pump out 110 million bits of data per second -- twice as much as the fastest WiFi wireless networking equipment now on the market. And that's just the beginning. Before the year's out, Freescale will be making chips that run twice as fast; by next year, it plans to offer a slice of silicon that will broadcast wireless data at one billion bits per second. Freescale is one of the leaders in a new kind of digital technology called "ultrawideband" that's being described as the next big consumer wireless technology, thanks to its ability to pump out massive amounts of data. But even though some ultrawideband devices will come to market this year, the technology is still hobbled by regulatory challenges and a long-running clash between two incompatible ultrawideband systems. According to Bob Heile, the Attleboro physicist who leads a wireless standards-setting committee for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), "Right now, it's 10 percent technology and 90 percent politics." Most radio devices send out a signal over a narrow band of frequencies. For example, WiFi data networks use a small set of frequencies in the 2.4 gigahertz range. But ultrawideband works by broadcasting over a much larger chunk of the radio spectrum -- from 3.1 to 10.5 gigahertz -- all at the same time. As a result, even a low-powered ultrawideband radio signal can carry huge amounts of data. Ultrawideband technology has other powerful attributes. Because the signal can penetrate solid objects, police forces and armies use the technology in radar systems that can see through walls. The precise digital pulses of an ultrawideband radio make it possible to locate a transmitter with an accuracy of a few inches, so automakers are working on ultrawideband detectors that can spot oncoming cars and prevent collisions. ... http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2004/06/25/the_next_big_thing_is_actually_ultrawide/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.