[opendtv] Ultrawideband group may disband
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 16:20:35 -0500
This sounds familiar, even if it doesn't directly apply to DTV.
I like this part, concerning the endless meetings and
interminable debates:
"The only ones benefiting from all this are the airlines and
the hotels," said Yoram Solomon,
Bert
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Ultrawideband group may disband
=20
Patrick Mannion
(01/16/2006 9:00 AM EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=3D177100256
LAS VEGAS - The IEEE 802.15.3a task group on ultrawideband
will likely vote this week in Hawaii on whether to disband.
If the motion passes, three years of acrimonious debate over
which form of UWB would best meet the task group's
requirements will come to an end. And the fight for a
480-Mbit/second short-range wireless interface will be
renewed in the marketplace, opening the door to multiple
competing forms of UWB.
While various proposals for an interface were put forward
after the initial call for proposals at the end of 2002, the
roster quickly got whittled down to two: Freescale
Semiconductor Inc.'s direct-sequence UWB and the WiMedia
Alliance's multiband orthogonal frequency-division
multiplexing (MB-OFDM) alternative. And there consensus
ended.
Since mid-2003, the two camps have traded blows around the
world, in meeting after meeting. Neither side has been
capable of gaining sufficient momentum to achieve the 75
percent majority needed for confirmation, although each has
held the lead at various times.
In the interim, Pulse-Link Inc. (Carlsbad, Calif.)
introduced its own form of UWB and has tried repeatedly to
broker a compromise. Its Common Signaling Mode allows the
various forms of UWB to coexist. But the WiMedia Alliance
was adamant: To avoid customer confusion, there should be
only one UWB implementation, the group said.
With no end in sight and hundreds of thousands of dollars
wasted on travel, the task group has had enough.
"The only ones benefiting from all this are the airlines
and the hotels," said Yoram Solomon, director of strategic
marketing and industry relations for Texas Instruments
Inc.'s Mobile Connectivity Solutions Division, speaking on
a UWB panel at last week's IEEE Consumer Communications
and Networking Conference here.
TI is one of the main backers of MB-OFDM, along with Intel,
Staccato Communications, Wisair and a host of consumer
electronics companies. Nodding in agreement was Martin
Rofheart, director of UWB operations for Freescale (Vienna,
Va.). Making a point of saying they were speaking only for
themselves and not for their respective camps, Solomon and
Rofheart agreed on one thing: It's time to call a halt to
the waste of valuable engineering resources and let the
market decide which form is better.
Speaking on the same panel, John Santhoff, chief technology
officer at Pulse-Link, then noted, "It takes a 75 percent
majority to disband - and we've never been able to get a
75 percent majority on anything." Santhoff said he
personally would still like to see a compromise hammered
out and a standard formed.
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