CSR has opted to align its ultra wideband (UWB) product development with the WiMedia Alliance, one of two technology approaches being followed by developers of UWB products.
According to James Collier, CTO of CSR: “The decision to work with the WiMedia Alliance is based on end-user experience and that is where WiMedia excels."
The industry's two UWB camps are direct sequence-UWB backer UWB Forum and MultiBand Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing UWB supporter WiMedia Alliance. Both approaches look like co-existing in the market following a failure by the IEEE’s UWB standard group 802.15.3a in January.
"Designers want to integrate the very latest technologies into their devices and the most important design issues they face are co-existence and interoperability," said Collier.
A big part of CSR’s plans for UWB is integration with its Bluetooth architecture which it claims will provide WiMedia UWB technology “quick access to the market and to hundreds of millions of Bluetooth enabled devices that are currently used”
According to Tom Siep, CSR global standards (WiMedia): “The use of proven interoperable Bluetooth profiles running over a WiMedia high speed radio will enable high speed data transfers with the proven low power capabilities of Bluetooth.”
In August 2005, CSR completed the acquisition of UbiNetics' software business which provided an R&D team to add to its existing software development in Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and UWB.
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