The WiMedia Alliance, which recently merged with the MultiBand OFDM Alliance (MBOA), today announced that Microsoft has joined the organization as a promoter member of the ultra wideband (UWB) technology.
Microsoft is the first software company to participate at this level. WiMedia-MBOA’s 14 promoter members, along with those from the many contributor and adopter companies, are leading the standardization and adoption of UWB for high-speed wireless, multimedia-capable personal area connectivity.
“With WiMedia Alliance, we are demonstrating our commitment to help the industry develop specification and interoperability programs that ensure best-of-breed wireless experiences with Windows-based PCs,” said Kosar Jaff, product unit manager in the Windows Division at Microsoft.
Ultra wideband is a wireless communications technology that operates in the 3.1 to 10.6 GHz spectrum band. Advantages of UWB include low power consumption, low cost/complexity and high data rates with precision location capability.
The WiMedia Alliance plans to release the first version of the MBOA physical (PHY) layer specification in the second quarter of 2005.
The WiMedia/MBOA UWB standard is supported by HP, Intel, Kodak, Microsoft, Nokia, Philips, Samsung, Sharp Labs, Sony, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, Wisair, and others.
Another flavor of UWB, the Direct Sequence-UWB (DS-UWB), is supported by the UWB Forum and is supported by Freescale Semiconductor, an offshoot of Motorola.
The IEEE 802.15.3a task group is hoping to develop one standard.
