UWB
6. UWB
There are still definitely two UWB camps fighting for mind and market share. The UWB Forum backs Direct Sequence Ultra-Wideband (DS-UWB) technology originally developed by startup ExtremeSprectrum, then bought by Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector, and since spun off as Freescale Semiconductor. The competing MBOA / WiMedia camp endorses the MB-OFDM UWB flavor that is based on work done by TI and endorsed by Intel and many other companies.
I got the sense that the two camps are heading in different directions with the UWB Forum concentrating on streaming media applications and the MBOA / WiMedia group getting behind a Wireless USB data-transfer-focused push to market. This isn't to say that either camp will permanently maintain that focus, but just that these applications are where their first efforts lie.
To help you get a sense for the technologies' development status I grabbed some pictures during my booth visits. The shot below shows one of the mini-PCI modules from either Taiwan ODM's Global Sun or Gemtek in one of the notebooks used in the various demos in Freescale's booth.
Freescale DS-UWB mini-PCI
The booth also had a streaming video demo using a combination of Intellon's HomePlug AV implementation and Freescale's DS-UWB using a Samsung media server (with Samsung mini-PCI card).
Freescale / Samsung DS-UWB
The booth did have a data transfer demo using the modified Motorola camera phone shown below. That application may be a little ways off, since the modified phone obviously uses a mini-PCI card.
