Signature - Q4, 2007 - (Page 9)

What Does UWB Mean to Me? By Dennis Laudick Imagine starting up your car one morning, and it takes off like a rocket. You don’t understand why because everything looks the same as it did the day before. That’s the impact ultra-wideband (UWB/WiMedia) technology will have on Bluetooth enabled products and applications, and the Bluetooth SIG is working to ensure that it’ll all be under the hood. This is not really about a new radio technology. UWB, originally used by the military for imaging and stealth communications, has been around for more than 20 years. But where traditional radios tend to use a powerful signal in a narrow amount of spectrum, UWB uses a low signal in a wide spectrum. This means UWB gives users huge bandwidth (up to 480Mbps over the air) with very little power consumption – only a couple milliwatts per Mbps. Technology has advanced in terms of data sizes. Look at digital photography. Ten megapixels has become the standard, and this means 5MB ﬁles. MP3 players are more common and integrating into more and more things we buy. But what hasn’t advanced until now is the supporting wireless technology. So UWB has been waiting in the wings for the standards and protocols that would enable it to morph into products people can use to handle big ﬁles. With High Speed Bluetooth technology, it will now be possible for people to transfer 50 photos of a family outing to their PCs in less time than it takes to get a cup of coffee, without killing the camera or phone battery. Partnering this ultra high bandwidth technology with the maturity and fantastic low-power capabilities of Bluetooth wireless technology is a natural evolution and a case study in compatibility. The Bluetooth SIG has traditionally put a lot of effort into making the technology user-friendly and putting all the changes “under the hood.” The addition of UWB won’t change any of that. Clearly, bringing a new radio into the system requires some fresh thinking by product designers as new use cases are opened up. But from the application and end-user standpoint, nothing will change – except the speed at which data moves. Of course, there are challenges in adopting UWB. Product designers must fully comprehend the change, how best to make it work for the consumer and how best to integrate High Speed Bluetooth technology into their products. However, the Bluetooth SIG and the rest of the industry are working hard to make sure that the traditional Bluetooth wireless protocol and UWB technology will work in harmony. That’s because we believe the scope of UWB will enable Bluetooth technology to reach new levels, making it more efﬁcient, but also much more capable, than ever before. Dennis Laudick is product marketing manager for Artimi Inc., a provider of semiconductors, software and reference designs for wireless consumer electronic devices. “Partnering UWB technology with the maturity and low-power capabilities of Bluetooth technology is a natural evolution and a case study in compatibility.” — Dennis Laudick, Artimi Inc. Bluetooth Special Interest Group | 9

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Signature - Q4, 2007

Signature - Q4, 2007 Contents The Road Ahead Getting Noticed In the News Keeping the Edge Why Wibree? The Message Zone Do You Compute? Command Center Mountain Magic On the Fast Track Give or Get? Groundsurf’s Up! Get in the Game Get on the List Number, Please! User-Friendly The Tell-Tale Car

Signature - Q4, 2007

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