Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Military's 'sneaky wave' out of hiding

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 22:20:45 -0500

Military's 'sneaky wave' out of hiding

By Ben Charny
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
March 11, 2003, 12:54 PM PT

Intel, Sony and others are meeting to decide which of a slew of proposals submitted
by wireless-networking companies will become a new standard to rival Bluetooth--and
a military technology once known as the "sneaky wave" is making a splash.

Philips, Texas Instruments and Samsung are among the other companies flexing their muscles

as part of the IEEE 802.15 Working Group for WPAN, which is meeting this week in Dallas to

settle on a new standard technology for wireless personal area networks, or WPANs.

Such networks create high-speed wireless connections over short distances to allow for
synchronization between a personal digital assistant and a computer, say, or to connect a
television to a cable TV box, and so on. The winning technology behind the standard, which
will
bear the name 802.15.3a, is expected to generate $1.39 billion in revenue by 2007,
according
to projections by Allied Business Intelligence.

The IEEE, or Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers, an
industry body that often sets
standards, isn't supposed to make
a final decision on any of the
802.15.3a proposals until June, at
the earliest. But already, there's
been at least one clear winner to
emerge from this week's meetings:
a wireless technique developed by
the military called ultra wideband
(UWB). It's at the heart of 95
percent of the proposals that were
submitted, according to Ben
Manny, an Intel director of wireless
technology development.

Supporters of UWB technology
say it's a cheaper, less
power-hungry way to wirelessly connect at short range than Bluetooth, the most popular
WPAN technology now in use, which has been embraced by cell phone makers and creators
of personal digital assistants, as well as by Microsoft and Apple Computer. UWB champions
also say the technology is 100 times faster than Bluetooth, making it better fit for
home-entertainment devices.

But UWB detractors say the commercially untested technology raises concerns about
interference with bandwidth neighbors, which include some versions of Wi-Fi.

The "sneaky wave"
UWB is a truly "wide" band, but just how wide it should be is one of the major questions
Intel
and the other IEEE members will answer this week.

Once known as the "sneaky wave," UWB was developed by the U.S. military to
communicate without being caught by then modern-day eavesdropping techniques.

It did so by being very, very wide. Most radio transmissions are assigned narrow bands of
frequency in which to operate. For instance, cell phone broadcasts use about 100MHz at a
time. But UWB's pulse is tens of thousands of megahertz wide and spills into bandwidth
already occupied. But its inventors claim the wave has so little actual power, it doesn't
cause any interference.

Some companies have submitted proposals that keep UWB true to its nature--a single
very, very wide wave. But others have decided to break the wave into pieces that measure
a few thousand megahertz each. Chipmaker XtremeSpectrum, for example, has submitted
a proposal that assigns the wave to two different pieces of spectrum. Motorola, which once

had two different proposals in the running, has since decided to back the XtremeSpectrum
plan, a representative said Tuesday. Motorola is also licensing XtremeSpectrum's
technology for use in its own products, the representative added. Other companies, such as

Intel, propose assigning the wave to 14 different areas.

Both those types of UWB would operate at about the same speed--transmitting data at
100 megabits per second over a distance of 10 meters.

The difference is more of a market question. Some countries might have restricted a
portion
of the huge swath of bandwidth that America's FCC set aside for UWB last year. So the
signal would need to find smaller quarters to operate in, said Manny, who's convinced the
technology will be a part of the finalized 802.15.3a standard.

"I believe UWB will be in there, but there are a number of different ways to do it," Manny

said.

http://news.com.com/2100-1039-992071.html
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