Comprehensive UWB tests give video a green light but caution on wireless USB

With the recent media attention on UWB and the announcements of 22 UWB based Wireless-USB (W-USB) products being certified by the WiMedia Alliance, the time has come to evaluate this exciting new wireless technology and see if it has delivered on the promise of transporting hundreds of megabits per second while delivering superior QoS. This test was organized with the cooperation of WirelessNetDesignline and EE Times and sponsored by Pulse~LINK, a vendor of UWB silicon. Our plan was to have a group of UWB companies collectively sponsor the test to promote their recently announced UWB products. UWB silicon providers and system vendors were invited to participate or to co-sponsor the test. Based on the wave of recent WiMedia certifications, we anticipated that the latest and greatest WiMedia reference designs would be submitted for the test. However, none of the WiMedia vendors chose to participate and we had to use off-the-shelf commercially available WiMedia W-USB products. This left Pulse~LINK as the only sponsor. The Pulse-LINK CWave implementation focuses on video distribution and embodies the complete point-to-point and point-to-multipoint communication system with TCP/IP throughput of over 500 Mbps and reaching 890 Mbps at close range. By comparison, the top throughput measured over the WiMedia links was an order of magnitude lower—around 50 Mbps at close range. Background The initial public awareness of Ultra Wide Band (UWB) came about in February 2002 when the FCC allocated 7.5 GHz of spectrum—3.1 to 10.6 GHz—or use by UWB devices, enabling this previously classified military technology to be commercialized, as had happened with CDMA years before.