The WiMedia Alliance today announced that it has finalized the Certification Program so its member companies can test their products for compliance with the WiMedia UWB Common Radio Platform specification.
This new WiMedia Certification Program enables the complete coexistence and interoperability from a variety of different UWB vendors.
WiMedia’s Certification Program is comprised of two parts, the first of which is a compliance and interoperability process that tests and “registers” Physical Layer implementations (PHYs). The program’s second part, WiMedia Platform Certification, tests eligible PHYs in a UWB platform that can be submitted for certification.
WiMedia Certification provides assurance that any platform that passes certification will coexist with other certified platforms.
WiMedia has held five PHY interoperability testing events over the past 11 months, based on the WiMedia Alliance PHY v1.1 specification. During these testing events, the performance and radio functionality of the PHY products against the approved WiMedia Alliance PHY V1.1 specification were verified.
In the most recent testing event held in late October, six WiMedia member companies and PHY vendors - Alereon, Inc., Realtek Semiconductor, Staccato Communications, Tzero Technologies, Inc., WiQuest Communications, and Wisair - tested their products against compliance criteria that included the final WiMedia Alliance’s PHY specification. This event resulted in the establishment of registered PHYs for these companies’ products.
With the finalization of the WiMedia Certified Program and the registration of these initial PHYs, testing for WiMedia Platform Certification is well under way, and a plan is in place for implementation in early 2007.
“Our certification program is designed to assure vendors and consumers alike that products certified by WiMedia will work properly in the close proximity to other WiMedia certified devices,” said Stephen Wood, president of the WiMedia Alliance.
The WiMedia Alliance, similar to the WiFi Alliance, is a not-for-profit open industry association that promotes multi-vendor interoperability of ultra-wideband (UWB). WiMedia UWB delivers wireless high-speed (480Mbps and beyond), low-power, short range connectivity for computer, home electronics, and mobile devices using a broad swath of frequencies from 3-10 GHz. The low power of UWB prevents interference.
Companies who announced WiMedia Alliance registration this week include;
- Alereon has successfully completed the WiMedia Alliance Registration Program for its AL4000 Family.
- WiQuest today announced it has obtained official registration of the company’s WQST110/101 chipset physical layer (PHY) at the WiMedia Alliance’s first PHY registration event.
- Staccato Communications announced the completion of the WiMedia Alliance’s official interoperation and compatibility testing of their single-chip, all-CMOS Ripcord product family.
- Wisair announced that its PHY implementation has been designated as a Registered PHY in the WiMedia® integrators list.
In related news, the USB Implementers Forum today announced that it will add support for ultra-wideband frequencies above 6 GHz to the Wireless USB specification by the middle of 2007 as an addition to its existing support for frequencies below 5 GHz.
Certified Wireless USB is designed to replace USB cords and wires. It is backward compatible with wired USB, allowing users to connect up to 127 devices and delivers a bandwidth of up to 480Mb/s at 3 meters and 110Mb/s at 10 meters. Certified Wireless USB is based on the WiMedia Alliance standard.
There is, however, a competing standard — Cable-Free USB. Cable-Free USB uses a different UltraWideBand Standard - Direct Sequence. It does not utilize frequencies above 5 GHz.
The two incompatible standards, Wireless USB (using WiMedia UWB) and Cable-Free USB (using Direct Sequence UWB) are in a battle for supremacy. Most observers believe that Wireless USB and WiMedia will win this battle since they are backed by more industry heavy hitters, such as Intel, Sony, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung and others.
Or maybe not. One commenter (which doesn’t seem to working now) says:
DS-UWB no longer exists, and for that matter, neither does Cable-Free USB; that product was introduced by Freescale Semiconductor for Belkin and Gefen, but Freescale never got that product into production and since then, Belkin has adopted Certified Wireless USB by the USB-IF for their commercial products, based on WiMedia UWB technoloy.
Related DailyWireless articles on UWB include; Cable-Free Vrs Wireless USB, Bluetooth Adopts UWB, 802.11n: Yea, UWB: Nea, and UWB Plugfest.
.gif)
