EETimes India - October 8, 2008 - (Page 3)

Trends Quest for the WPAN holy grail continued from page continue to adopt prevalent technologies that can deliver the functionality or performance they need for their product to be differentiated in the market as well as cost within acceptable limits for their market segments. Wi-Fi is being exploited heavily into consumer products such as digital photo frames, wireless speakers and even handsets for this reason, although it is not power-efficient. Even proprietary technologies thrive in this regime. So, what can the conclusion be on the search for the universal WPAN technology? An emerging wireless technology needs to ride two horses at the same time: it has to address and solve a new need—be it bandwidth, power or deployment scenario—and it should necessarily embrace prevailing protocols and applications. Bluetooth cast itself heavily in the mould of IrDA initially and USB later, and in between it had overcome the ambition of being a low-power alternative to Wi-Fi. In the process, Bluetooth lost direction until it found its place firmly in the peer-to-peer cable replacement for peripheral as for USB, Bluetooth and WiNet. However, it has been dominated over the years by the CW-USB and in the process has lost at least for the time being the immediate MAC for high-speed Bluetooth. Tech maturity Any wireless technology takes more than ten years to become mature and to be accepted in mainstream products, as seen in the cases of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee or UWB. It is not sufficient for a new wireless technology to have a killer application, but it is also essential to go successfully through the gates of regulatory acceptance, achieve the performance barrier in real-world deployment, and break the price barrier for mass-market acceptance. Therefore, a common radio platform helps product developers to focus on the Discuss UWB vs. Wi-Fi: Connecting handsets to peripherals UWB has the bandwidth advantage but Wi-Fi now also extends to the PAN. Which wireless tech can better connect mobile phones to peripherals like HDDs, displays and printers? Discuss applications and solutions to be developed without being dragged into the technology dependencies. UWB has the potential for becoming an ideal candidate for such a RF platform. WPAN MAC architectures will have to lend multi-protocol support just as the MPLS did in the data-networking world. WiMedia UWB provides architectural elements such as protocol convergence and adaptation layers. However, there are going to be multiple WPAN technologies for a very long time, given that scalability of a single technology to the entire spectrum of deployment scenarios is not practical. Online UWB technology extends to handsets Sorting out WiMedia UWB coexistence issues UWB offers alternative to HDMI cable accessories, especially audio and HID devices. WiMedia UWB at first limited itself to being a pure MAC technology and enabling multiple protocol adaptation layers such EETI_mother.indd 1 1/14/08 5:17:49 PM EE Times-India | October 1-15, 2008 | www.eetindia.com http://forum.eetindia.co.in/FORUM_POST_1000039249_1200086409_0.HTM?ClickFromNewsletter_081001 http://forum.eetindia.co.in/FORUM_POST_1000039249_1200086409_0.HTM?ClickFromNewsletter_081001 http://www.eetindia.co.in/ART_8800542313_1800005_NT_8d9a9119.HTM?ClickFromNewsletter_081001 http://www.eetindia.co.in/ART_8800543124_1800005_TA_ee3cff25.HTM?ClickFromNewsletter_081001 http://www.eetindia.co.in/ART_8800542952_1800005_NT_41195fdd.HTM?ClickFromNewsletter_081001 http://www.eetindia.co.in/STATIC/REDIRECT/Newsletter_081001_EETIreg.htm http://www.eetindia.com/STATIC/REDIRECT/Newsletter_081001_EETI02.htm?ClickFromNewsletter_081001

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EETimes India - October 8, 2008

EETimes India - October 8, 2008 National Semiconductor Tech Insights Trends Cadence Texas Instruments Fine-tuning RF Platform Shrinks Design Time DigiKey Mobile WiMAX Enables IP Convergence

EETimes India - October 8, 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.