Bluetooth is voor sommige toepassingen technisch te lastig. Die conclusie heeft een groot aantal elektronicabedrijven getrokken. Zij willen op termijn een nieuwe standaard lanceren: TransferJet Data. Deze technologie werd recnetelijk gedemonstreerd op de IFA beurs in Berlijn.

TransferJet werkt anders dan Bluetooth over een lengte van slechts enkele centimeters, maar de gebruiker heeft dan wel transfersnelheden tot 560 Mbps (gemiddeld: 375 Mbps) tot zijn beschikking. De ideale snelheid voor het uitwisselen van contactgegevens en bestanden bijvoorbeeld.

De techniek werkt via 4,5 GHz, een frequentie die in de meeste landen zonder zendlicentie gebruikt kan worden. Anders dan WIFI is de zendtechniek ook nog eens veel zuiniger en niet gevoelig voor interferentie. Daarnaast is de techniek veel vriendelijker in het gebruik dan Bluetooth.

De technologie combineert de snelheid van Ultra Wide Band (UWB) met het gemak van NFC (Near Field Communications). De korte afstand is mogelijk een nadeel, maar daar staat tegenover dat de verbindingen zeer betrouwbaar zijn. Daarnaast is het erg moeilijk om vanwege de korte afstand gegevens te onderscheppen.

Hoewel ontwikkeld door Sony, is de technologie inmiddels geadopteerd door een consortium van onder meer Samsung, Toshiba, Kodak, Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, Sharp, Olympus, Pioneer en Sony Ericsson. Aanvankelijk wordt gedacht aan toepassingen voor fotocamera’s, videocamera’s en mobiele telefoons.

Op IFA demonstreerde Sony hoe data van een mobiele telefoon kon worden verstuurd naar een digitale fotolijst. Toshiba stuurde foto’s van een mobiele telefoon naar een laptop.

Versie 1.0 van TransferJet is volgende maand gereed. Of het dan snel zal worden opgepakt is de vraag. De fabrikanten zelf rekenen op een introductie volgend jaar.

La nuova frontiera del trasferimento dati wireless potrebbe essere PSD, il nuovo device della francese Leyo, che innova le modalità con cui vengono copiati i file tra dispositivi. La velocità di trasmissione è la prerogativa principale di PSD; può inviare dati ad una velocità di 10 Mb/s, in modo più veloce rispetto al WiFi e alla USB 2.0 grazie ad una tecnologia conosciuta come UWB, che sfrutta una banda wireless difficilmente intercettabile per la sua velocità e la mancanza di eccessiva propagazione.

E’ dotata di accelerometro, infatti scambia dati tra device simili con un semplice movimento del polso, uno schermo per monitorare l’hard disk da 16 giga, un ingresso USB e una docking station. Una particolare attenzione è stata dedicata alla sicurezza con l’integrazione di un lettore di impronte digitali. PSD di Lenyo dovrebbe fare la sua comparsa sul mercato ad inizio Giugno con un prezzo che si aggira intorno ai 180 euro.

By: Anna Valmero

Bluetooth-enabled devices would be able to use wireless fidelity-powered devices to transfer information soon. Bluetooth refers to a wireless technology operating at a short-range, and uses the 2.4 GHz radio frequency band. It allows fixed and mobile devices to transfer data, voice or both at 3 megabits per second.

On April 21, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) said Bluetooth 3.0 would be unveiled. “This is the wireless technology equivalent of a low hanging fruit,” Bluetooth SIG executive director Michael Foley said in a statement. “What we are doing is taking classic Bluetooth connections–using Bluetooth protocols, profiles, security and other architectural elements–and allowing it to jump on top of the already present 802.11 radio, when necessary, to send bulky entertainment data, faster.”

Simply put, the Bluetooth version would allow devices, such as phones to “borrow” wireless fidelity (WiFi) connections on the same device. This paves way for wireless bulk synchronization of music libraries between PC and MP3 player, bulk download of photos to a printer or PC and video file transfer from camera or phone to computer or TV at a rate of 3 megabits per second, according to the Bluetooth SIG.

“When the speed of 802.11 is overkill, the connection returns to normal operation on a Bluetooth radio for optimal power management and performance,” he added. In mid-2008, Foley disclosed the new Bluetooth specification would be able to ride on the WiFi and ultra-wideband (UWB) protocol.

In 2006, the Bluetooth SIG selected the WiMedia Alliance brand of UWB technology as a high speed channel for Bluetooth technology, said Bluetooth SIG. Development work of the two bodies to co-locate UWB technology in Bluetooth devices is underway. However, the Bluetooth SIG would use 802.11, a wireless technology present in many devices today.

This two-phased road map would also allow for a steady evolution in Bluetooth devices using 802.11 today while readying for the presence of UWB in the near future, said Bluetooth SIG. “We are committed to speedy wireless personal area network connections and we will always be looking for the best near term and long term way to accomplish that,” added Foley. “The greatness of a generic alternate radio architecture being developed is that it’s adaptable.”

There are nearly 2 billion Bluetooth-equipped products in the market. “The Bluetooth SIG is taking a logical step by applying Bluetooth protocols over an existing 802.11 radio to achieve efficient transfers of high data throughput applications,” said Flint Pulskamp, wireless and mobile analyst at IDC, in a statement.

Flint added: “Since Bluetooth and 802.11 already have significant traction in mobile devices, this coupled solution could prove to be an efficient interim solution, as the Bluetooth SIG continues to develop UWB for the future.” Global sales of Bluetooth-enabled handset will grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 7.68 percent rfrom 2011 to 2015, noted Global Industry Analysts Inc.

[qi:004] Technology standards don’t die a quick death in most cases. For years after the market has abandoned a failed standard, it still exists in orphaned products hoping for eventual resurrection. Yesterday, EETimes reported another step in the long road to obsolescence for Ultra-wideband saying the WiMedia Alliance, a standards body promoting UWB, has shut its doors.

The WiMedia Alliance is handing over all current and future specification development of its version of ultrawideband (UWB) to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, the Wireless USB Promoter Group and the USB Implementers Forum. Once the handoff is completed, it will shut down.

Blame it on failed execution, an uneven regulatory environment or the world deciding it doesn’t need another low-power, high data rate wireless transfer protocol. Either way, there are still a few startups such as Alereon, Stacatto Communications and Wisair holding out hopes that UWB might make it on mobile handsets for video transfer or as some other use. The hope is that UWB will be folded into the higher data rate transfer standard for Bluetooth — giving those startups a reason to exist.

[qi:004] Ultra-wideband startup TZero Technologies has shut down, according to a story posted today by EETimes.  The chipmaker, which raised $18 million back in March, joins at least two other defunct UWB startups that had hoped to use the wireless technology to transmit large amounts of data short distances. This leaves UWB startups Alereon, Wisair, Radiospire and the recently funded combination of Staccato Communications and Artimi left fighting over a shrinking opportunity.

UWB  was pitched as ideal for delivering HD video wirelessly, or as a wireless docking station for computer peripherals. But because of false starts and the high cost of UWB chips, it never gained a foothold in the consumer market. Now, established technologies such as Wi-Fi, and new ones such as WirelessHD, have rendered UWB moot. The remaining startups are pitching UWB for mobile phones, but because of cost, space and power consumption reasons, the mobile market is far less forgiving than the PC market when it comes to taking on extra silicon. I’m not holding my breath.

Today, Ultra-wideband chip makers Artimi and Staccato Communications announced $20 million in funding and a merger agreement, which seems like tying two leaky boats together, giving them some more gas and hoping they make it to shore. The combination of Artimi and Staccato brings together the two UWB companies that were rumored to be running out of cash (as most of the other players had received cash earlier this year).

I have my doubts about the future of UWB, the high-speed personal area networking technology, after the closure of UWB chipmaker WiQuest, the bankruptcy of UWB chip firm Focus Enhancements and the halt of Intel’s (s INTC) UWB research program, but belief in UWB apparently remains high. Alereon CEO Eric Broockman, earlier this month, told me he believed that cell phones might be the eventual killer application for UWB, as people could use it for high-speed data transfers without sucking up a lot of power. He pointed out that SK Telecom (s SKM), which had invested in Alereon this year showed a prototype handset with UWB chips inside. Maybe there is hope, but I’m not betting on those boats reaching the shore.

Enligt tidningen Mobil har UWB tekniken det motigt just nu, fler företag, däribland Intel har lagt ned utvecklingen av tekniken. Ultra Wide Band var tänkt att integreras i framtida Bluetooth standarder. Fördelarna med tekniken är dess höga datakapacitet. Genom att sända med små effekter över ett brett frekvensspektra, ibland upp till flera GHz, skall man kunna nå höga hastigheter på upp till 480 Mbit/s.

Anhängarna av Ultra Wide Band drar slutsatsen att det som händer nu är en marknadsanpassning och konsolidering. Som vanligt lär framtiden utvisa vilket.

Five years ago, the promise of a new networking technology known as Ultra-wideband was a living room without wires, where DVD players, set-top boxes and video accessories could connect with TVs over the air. Ultra-wideband (UWB) is a wireless personal area networking technology that can transmit large amounts of data for short distances using very little power. Over time, its promise expanded from the living room to the home office, as backers used Ultra-wideband as the basis for Wireless USB and the WiMedia standard.

So far, this dream hasn’t materialized, and the technology has failed to find a mass market. Today, we still have wires in both the office and living room, and a host of competing standards have whittled away UWB’s opportunity. In the last week, we’ve seen players exit the UWB business, and Intel announced that it has halted research on the technology. For venture firms who have invested nearly $400 million in the space, the fate of Ultra-wideband offers a cautionary tale about the perils of betting on semiconductor standards.

On Oct. 31, five-year-old UWB chipmaker WiQuest shut its doors when it was unable to raise more money or find a buyer for its technology. That led to heralds of doom for Ultra-wideband, with analysts and media blaming long-delayed product launches, expensive chips and a hostile regulatory environment. This week, Intel said it had discontinued its UWB efforts, saying the market wasn’t worth its R&D efforts. If the technology somehow manages to revive, Intel says it could buy up one of the six remaining startups in the space.

The plan makes sense for Intel because UWB, like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and WiMAX, is a standardized technology. That means any UWB chipmaker will have the basic set of characteristics Intel needs to play in the market. Standards are a double-edged sword for venture investors. On one hand they are good for consumers and electronics makers because they enable multiple devices from different vendors to work together. Any Wi-Fi router should talk to any Wi-Fi chip in a computer, phone or camera. This helps drive consumer adoption and can lead to the creation of a huge market. Venture capital firms love this, because if a standard takes off it can build a company like Broadcom or Atheros that can generate rapid returns in a relatively short amount of time.

The other edge of that sword is that chipmakers who adhere to the standard can do little to differentiate their chips, which makes it easy to switch vendors and effectively commoditizes the product. This happened for the Wi-Fi standard back in 2000-2002, when venture firms put more than $2 billion into more than 40 Wi-Fi companies, only to see a few rise to the top. There is also the risk, inherent in all technologies, that the market won’t adopt it. This seems to be what’s happening for UWB.

Instead of seeing the technology completely die out, Eric Broockman, CEO of UWB chipmaker Alereon, argues that Intel’s retreat from the technology and WiQuest’s failure mean a shakeup similar to that experienced by the Wi-Fi market is happening with UWB. “Typically in this type of semiconductor investing there is a win-place-show mentality,” Broockman says. “One wins big, one gets acquired for a good price, one gets acquired for a not-so-good price, and everyone else goes away. That process in UWB is being accelerated by the current economic downturn.”

There were at least seven UWB chipset companies formed in the 2003 time frame. Now, many appear close to failure. WiQuest, which raised about $54 million, was one. Two others, Artimi and Staccato Communications, are both rumored to be running out of cash. Artimi has raised $31.5 million and couldn’t be reached for comment for this story. Intel Capital invested in Staccato when it was pushing UWB. That could position Staccato to end up being the company in the show category, because Intel might buy it for its intellectual property at a cheap price down the road. 

Fighting for the win and place spots are Alereon, which has raised more than $70 million with a small amount coming earlier this year from SKTelecom; TZero, which raised $18 million in March led by CID Group; and Wisair, which raised $24 million in February led by Susquehanna Growth Equity. Radiospire is another player in the UWB market, but it appears to be shifting gears — or at least hedging its bets — by also making chips for transferring wireless HD video using a different standard.

Competeing standards are one of the reasons UWB is having such a hard time finding a toehold. For desktop personal area networking, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are becoming more prominent — and have the benefit of cheaper chips. In video, UWB has conceded to Wi-Fi and specialized standards such as Wireless HD and WHDI. Those left on the playing field are quick to point out that UWB still has legs — and it might, if it finds the type of killer application that can drive adoption rates and increase chip sales to the point where they cost less to embed. But the shakeup happening here proves that chip investment isn’t for the faint of heart.

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com

While I was out trick-or-treating with my daughter, EETimes reported that Ultra-wideband startup WiQuest had shut its doors. This is a sad day for the more than 120 employees of the Allen, Texas chipmaker, and unfortunate for the venture backers who put at least $54 million in the wireless networking company, but it’s something we should prepare to see more of as the wave of startups backing that technology finally run out of money and compelling arguments for UWB. If the supposed No. 1 vendor in a space can’t hack it, I have little faith in the others.

Not that UWB couldn’t have been a good personal wireless networking technology, with its promise of 480 Mbps data rates delivered over a few feet, but it was stymied by a standards war that dragged on forever, causing products to hit the market late. Those products offered the ability to connect computer peripherals wirelessly–something already accomplished via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth–and people found them underwhelming. Then those late first-generation products didn’t even perform as advertised, often transmitting data at less than half the rate the promised speeds.

Vendors weren’t impressed. I watched an executive from Microsoft stand up at a meeting of UWB executives earlier this year, and basically yell at them for delivering an clunky product that didn’t work. Ironically it was a demonstration from WiQuest that showed a UWB-connected monitor at that meeting, that seemed to provide the most compelling case for UWB.

But to build that case the chips needed to be cheap enough to justify their addition to laptops, displays and other products. To get costs down, chip startups needed to sell a lot of chips–something they can’t do unless there’s a large market demand for the technology (or a huge vendor like Intel pushing it). Perhaps if other UWB startups hang on, and can launch a second generation product, we may see companies such as Alereon, Wisair, TZero Technologies and Staccato Communications keep going, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

Even Radiospire, a UWB chipmaker aiming to use the technology to deliver HD video to televisions has seemingly shifted gears, offering 60 GHz schips for video transfer. Maybe others can make similar transitions, and avoid WiQuest’s fate. Wisair and Tzero did manage to raise more money earlier this year, which gives them some breathing room.

“Gefen has announced a new wireless HDMI extender that uses UWB technology from Tzero Technologies. The no cable extender delivers wired quality HDMI from Blu-ray and other HDMI sources to the TV or projector.

The extender features built-in interference elimination technology for optimal picture quality. The device can stream full 1080p with 5.1 surround sound up to 10 meters across a room. The extender offers dual HDMI ports, component video, and analog audio. Pricing and availability are unknown at this time”….<More>

hdmi, 1080p, uwb

The future of tech in just one word: plastics

“In the 2002 movie “Minority Report,” director Steven Spielberg painted the future as a place where no surface was still. Newspapers updated in readers’ hands and advertisements talked to passersby. Even cereal boxes were animated.

Now, these technologies are finally arriving, albeit in a piecemeal fashion. One of the driving forces: breakthroughs in plastics-based electronics”….<More>

“John Santhoff, CTO of Pulse~Link Inc., puts his hand over the upper left corner of the 42-inch Westinghouse flat-panel high-definition TV set, then moves it to the upper right corner. The picture fades slightly, so Santhoff knows that is where the manufacturer has put the Ultra-Wideband antenna in this set. Until he cups his palm directly over this antenna, built into the unit and thus impeding the signal, there was no indication that this TV set is getting its input from a UWB transmitter (fed by a DVD player and set-top box) about 30 feet across the room”…. <More>

I’m going to be blunt: Ultra-Wideband (UWB) is going to fail. First of all, just by looking at the increases in WiFi speeds between 802.11b to 802.11g to 802.11n, the math indicates that the next iteration of the extremely popular wireless technology should be at around 1,886 Mbps* by around somewhere from 2013 to 2017**. At those speeds, over a combination of 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, as 802.11n uses, and maybe even new frequencies, WiFi could certainly handle wireless streaming of full, uncompressed HD video at resolutions of 1080p or higher. It would theoretically even be possible with 802.11n. (However, some compression may be necessary there.)

Because you will be able to wirelessly stream HD video throughout your entire home, why would you need another technology just to stream the video from a receiver to your TV? The TV will simply have WiFi built in. Due to both this and ever increasing Internet connection speeds, optical media as a means of transporting audio-video data will become a thing  of the past as it quickly is already. Although Blu-ray won the HD format war with HD DVD,  it will most likely fail as far as becoming the standard for viewing movies. Online digital content downloads are certainly the future – it doesn’t take an expert to figure that one out. With Xbox LIVE Marketplace’s HD video downloads and Netflix streaming, the iTunes Store’s HD video downloads, and the PlayStation Network’s new HD video downloads, the Internet, along with the wireless connections to transport that media to your television, is the future of home entertainment. There will have to be some way to get the media to a receiver for your TV anyway, which will have to be wireless (WiFi seems like a good candidate, now doesn’t it?), so that same technology might as well be used to move the content directly to the TV – especially since UWB is a short-range technology and would absolutely have no chance of streaming the video over the Internet, like WiFi can. UWB will only work if there is physical media involved, which there definitely will not be.

*Math explanation: The increase from 802.11b (11 Mbps) to 802.11g (54 Mbps) was equal to 3.909090… times faster. The increase from 802.11g (54 Mbps) to 802.11n (300 Mbps) is equal to 5.55555… times faster. That’s an increase of 1.1316872427983539094650205761319 times in the amount of improvement between the wireless technologies. That means that the increase between 802.11n and the next iteration of 802.11 should be equal to 6.2871513488797439414723365340655 times faster. That would put the next WiFi spec at 1,886.1454046639231824417009602196 Mbps.

**Timeframe explanation: 802.11b and 802.11a were released in 1999. 802.11g was released in 2003. 802.11n will be released in 2009. That puts the various year differences at 4 and 6 years. If that pattern of increasing by 2 years continues, the next wireless technology could be released in 8 years. That makes the overall range anywhere from 4 to 8 years from 2009 (therefore, 2013 to 2017).

Heard about CRLH leaky wave antennas? They are capable to radiate from backfire to endfire.

Prof. Christophe Caloz, École Polytechnique de Montreal, and Shulabh Gupta have been developped a new spectrogram analyzer which uses the unique properties of CRLH antennas.
This system is time and frequency independent and enables monitoring, in real-time, UWB signals. Then, it opens doors to faster and more reliable signal measurement and characterization.

This system is fully tested and characterized with a first prototype and we’re looking for an industrial partner interested in moving to commercialization. Interested?
Further info is also available on Flintbox…