The towel has been
thrown in on an IEEE ultra wideband (UWB) standard.
After three years
of dispute, the IEEE task group responsible for UWB, 802.15.3a, has
decided to disband in a near unanimous vote.
The two UWB camps,
direct sequence-UWB backer UWB Forum and MultiBand Orthogonal
Frequency Division Multiplexing UWB supporter WiMedia Alliance,
said in a joint statement today that they will continue to move UWB
into the market and concur that, at this stage in UWB market
development, “a more prudent course of action is necessary to allow
the market to move forward with the commercialization of multiple
UWB technologies."
That does not mean
competition between the two decidedly different approaches to UWB
will lessen, however. The short-range personal area network
technology that allows high speed sends, mainly targeting video is
expected to have a strong presence in the wireless market as the
connected home continues to form. Major semiconductor players in
consumer electronics, like Intel and Texas Instruments, have come
out in support of technology.
"The vote to kill
the IEEE 802.15.3a UWB standards effort was one of irony,” stated
Eric Broockman, CEO of Alereon, a WiMedia UWB player. “After more
than two and a half years of discussions without a decision being
reached, the IEEE has unanimously voted to kill the 802.15.3a
proposed standard and quit wasting everyone's time.
According to
Martin Rofheart, director of UWB Operations at UWB Forum member
company Freescale: “While it is unfortunate that this did not
happen, we believe meaningful standards are ultimately made by the
market.”
According to
Alereon’s Broockman: “Bluetooth technology was brought to fruition
in much the same way -- independent groups worked to create
competing standards solutions and the market decided which version
was the strongest and most likely to support innovation and
consumer buy-in."