WiQuest Communications officially closed its doors on Oct 31, the first of perhaps several casualties to fall among ultrawideband chip designers, says EE Times. The Allen, Texas, company employed about 120 people focused on the wireless USB protocol.
At least a dozen mainly venture-backed companies have been pursuing UWB for uses such as wireless USB links on consumer and computer gear.
“I think this is a black eye for UWB in the short term, but it opens up more opportunities for the remaining players,” said Brian O’Rourke, principal analyst at InStat (Scottsdale, Ariz.).
“WiQuest was certainly the leader in first-generation UWB silicon shipments. However, it seemed to have difficulty moving to a one-chip solution that was capable of delivering the upper-band support necessary for worldwide acceptance,” said Todd A. Brown, vice president of worldwide sales at the company. “We were at about a one-percent attach rate in notebooks and needed to be at 5-10 percent and growing,” he added. Less than 100,000 UWB-enabled devices shipped in 2007, according to InStat.
OEMs want to pay less than $5 for UWB chips, an expectation set by today’s Bluetooth and Wi-Fi silicon, Brown said. Analysts predicted second-generation chips coming to market in 2009 may be able to hit such price points, but not today’s parts.
In addition, system makers want power consumption of less than 300 milliWatts, especially for handsets, Brown said. Chips are consuming close to a Watt today, he added.
First generation wireless USB chips were criticized for delivering less than 50 Mbits/s performance, in part due to non-native implementations and overhead of the USB protocol. On the regulatory front, UWB is still not approved for use in all geographies, and some areas use different spectrum bands for UWB.
Brown predicted other UWB startups may soon find themselves in a similar position. In September, Focus Enhancements Inc., a supplier of UWB and other wireless chip sets filed for bankruptcy.
Three wireless systems for connecting HDTVs are competing for the home, says EE Times. This “battle of technologies” is being fought between three contending systems, 5 GHz, 60 GHz, and ultra wideband (UWB), according to ABI Research. Most established wireless vendors are waiting to see how the market evolves, says the research firm.
- WirelessHD uses 60-GHz transmission. The bandwidth available at 60 GHz allows data transmissions as fast as 4 Gbits/s. The format is backed by lead technology developer SiBeam, along with Intel, LG, Panasonic, NEC, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba.
- Wireless High Definition Interface (WHDI), using 5 GHz. WHDI, developed by Israeli company Amimon, reportedly achieves a data rate as fast as 3 Gbits/s. WiFi 802.11n technology using MIMO can achieve up to 600 mbps, but cannot yield a 3-Gbit/s data rate. For that, Amimon tapped an existing signal-processing technology called joint-source channel coding.
- WiMedia Alliance uses Ultrawideband (UWB) in a band of frequencies from 4.2 to 4.8 GHz or higher. Their Wireless USB standard claims a data rate of 480 Mbits/s and works by compressing and expanding HD video images.
There is no consensus among consumer manufacturers on a single standard or unified wireless HD format. But wireless connections are expected to simplify A/V installations and allow more flexibility in positioning TVs.
