Vision - January/February 2009 - (Page 35) what products would next adopt UWB capabilities, and whether those would be in the CE world. Alereon’s Broockman says the industry in short order could expect to see UWBenabled wireless conference room projectors, as vendors look to eliminate VGA cables, and digital cameras that will be equipped to automatically upload photos to a PC at a very high speed without draining your battery. Stephen Wood, responsible for UWB standards and regulation strategy at Intel, is also president of the technology’s major promoting association, the WiMedia Alliance. In an interview shortly before Intel decided it would outsource its UWB needs, Wood said the technology’s prospects were strong because its market opportunities straddle both the PC and CE worlds. “Typically there’s one upward inflection point and you end up opening one major market,” Wood said. “What I’m suggesting here is that you’ve got several.” In addition to easily imagined applications in which video content could be transferred from one electronics system to another via UWB technology, Wood points to advanced applications such as augmented reality. In augmented reality, through a pair of enhanced glasses, graphic elements are overlaid on top of real images. An example would be car repair possibilities being explored by BMW, in which instructions would appear as a user is looking under the hood. “You can use the same thing for gaming and a myriad of other applications,” Wood says. For now, UWB is making its way into more traditional applications. It is edging its way from PCs and peripherals into CE devices set in the increasingly digital home theater—a natural progression from the PC. Inside the Living Room “We felt the place it makes the most sense right now is in stationary electronics,” says Dave Borison, senior marketing director at fabless UWB chipmaker Tzero Technologies. “There’s an explosion of HDTVs. We have a perfect solution to replace what are right now very expensive HDMI cables. It’s just more cost-effective than wired HDMI cables, particularly as you get to greater lengths.” Last spring, Hitachi Ltd. said it selected www.ce.org “Pulse-Link is finding healthy demand for UWB-enabled displays for digital signage in the B2B market.” —Bruce Watkins Tzero’s UWB technology to enable wireless HD video for Hitachi’s Ultra Thin (UT) HDTV series. Gefen Technology announced a new wireless HDMI extender that uses Tzero’s UWB technology to deliver wired-quality HDMI from Blu-ray and other HDMI sources to a TV or projector. And Borison says Tzero has secured design wins with other companies in Europe and Japan. “We’re seeing a lot of momentum,” he said. But Gefen appears to be hedging its bets. Last fall, it showed its Wireless for HDMI extension solution, based on a UWB competitor, for transmitting highdefinition video and audio. It uses highdefinition WHDI wireless technology by Israeli fabless chipmaker Amimon that operates in the 5 GHz unlicensed band to deliver uncompressed audio and video in the HDMI format up to 90 feet. And despite the burgeoning high-definition television market, UWB adoption by the likes of Hitachi doesn’t carry as much weight as their finding a home in more ubiquitous CE devices like mobile phones, says Avi Greengart, research director of mobile devices at the Sterling, Va., market research firm Current Analysis. UWB’s embrace by power brands would also help. “A key driver is someone who can make a market,” Greengart says. “Hitachi isn’t quite there in terms of brand strength and portfolio. If Apple used it to create wireless peripherals, or if Nokia would put the standard in all its phones, either of those two would be market-creating acts.” Until then, other UWB proponents are taking smaller inroads into the CE market via alternate routes. Pulse-Link, a Carlsbad, Calif., fabless chip company says it is the only semiconductor company to develop UWB technology to distribute interactive HD multimedia content through the home over a hybrid wired/ wireless network. “Pulse-Link is finding a stepping stone to the CE world in healthy demand for UWB-enabled displays for digital signage in the business-to-business market,” says Bruce Watkins, Pulse-Link’s president and chief operations officer. “It’s a good market entry,” Watkins says. Market-Driving Pricing To reach the kind of volumes and robust market boost that the mobile phone and handheld market could give UWB, chipset pricing must fall dramatically. In the past year or two, UWB chip were priced at roughly $15 and are now in the $10 to $12 range compared with Wi-Fi chips at around $5 and Bluetooth at around $1, says Brian O’Rourke, a principal analyst with the research firm In-Stat. UWB chip prices must drop to around $6 or $7 to drive volumes, which won’t happen until late 2009 or 2010, O’Rourke adds. “When Bluetooth got in the $6 range, that’s when they got picked up in mobile phones,” he recounts. “There’s some historical precedent for that price point leading to greater demand for UWB silicon.” UWB chipset prices will ultimately settle in lower than those of Wi-Fi chips, asserts Tzero’s Borison, because UWB technology is less complicated. “They use far less complex signal processing,” Borison says of the UWB devices. “The modulation schemes used by UWB are simpler than Wi-Fi. The reason is that we are transmitting our signals over a very wide signal, a 500 MHz wide channel, whereas Wi-Fi is a 20 or maybe 40 MHz channel.” The shakeout that appears to have begun with WiQuest’s closing and Intel’s decision last fall to buy versus make its own UWB products could bode well for the UWB market. “Some of the larger ‘who’s who’ of the IC makers hasn’t gotten into the market yet, and the only way to catch up at that point will be to acquire somebody,” observes analyst McEuen. “I think it will strengthen the market because now you’ll have big companies investing and believing in the market. You’ll have the market leaders.” • January/February 2009 35 http://www.ce.org
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