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Wireless Nets Poised to Hit Higher Speeds

Philips and General Atomic team up to produce ultra-wideband chip sets that could help your home network run 40 times faster.

Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service

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A joint effort announced Monday between Koninklijke Philips Electronics and research and development company General Atomics is aimed at producing chip sets for wireless network equipment that runs more than 40 times as fast as today's IEEE 802.11b networks.

The companies have signed a memorandum of understanding that calls for jointly developing chip sets for UWB (ultra-wideband), an emerging short-range, high-bandwidth wireless LAN technology. The companies also plan to support the process of standardizing UWB technology, according to a Philips statement.

Philips envisions the chip sets going into gear that transfers digital content at 480 megabits per second between clusters of entertainment or computing devices in the home. These could include digital video recorders, set-top boxes, TVs, and PCs, according to the statement.

Transmitting Data

UWB encodes data into short pulses that are transmitted on a wide range of radio frequencies. Although UWB pulses would use frequencies that are simultaneously used by several other kinds of networks, including 802.11a, the pulses are designed to be so low-powered that they don't interfere with other communications, according to Gemma Paulo, an analyst at In-Stat/MDR, in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The technology is expected to deliver much higher capacity than do current wireless LANs, though over a shorter distance. For example, Intel last year demonstrated a UWB network that it said delivered 90 mbps to 100 mbps and could work over several meters.

Philips and most other vendors expect further development to bring the speed up to about 480 mbps, Paulo said.

Limited Approval

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission last February approved the commercial use of UWB with some limitations after a long fight over possible interference with navigation systems and other spectrum users.

In addition, a group in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is expected to become an official standards task group this month and develop a standard for UWB, Paulo said. Such a standard probably would not be completed until a year or 18 months from now, although prestandard products may arrive in time for the holiday shopping season late this year, she added.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas later this week, start-up XtremeSpectrum, of Vienna, Virginia, will demonstrate home entertainment products that use its UWB technology, according to a representative of the company.

Cooperation between Amsterdam-based Philips and San Diego-based General Atomic will bring together radio-frequency and semiconductor process technology from Philips and an advanced multiband UWB technology from General Atomic, according to the statement.

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