Alereon Announces UWB Chipset

This week, Alereon announced that it had demonstrated the
world’s first 0.13-micron CMOS 480 Mbps-capable MultiBand OFDM ultrawideband
(UWB) chipset. The silicon is the first to implement the MBOA SIG‘s UWB standard, moving that technology
one step closer to commercialization.

Eric Broockman, Alereon’s CEO, says the plan is to deliver the first radios
to partners by the end of 2004, to demonstrate the solution at CES
2005
, and then to have production products ready by the middle of the year.
Commercial products will be released by next fall.

“It really depends upon how fast our customers can get them into the market,” Broockman says.

The key market for Alereon’s technology, Broockman says, is as a wireless replacement
for USB cables. The Wireless USB Promoter Group, the formation of which was
announced
in February
of this year, is basing its Wireless USB spec on the MBOA SIG’s
standard, not the competing DS-UWB standard.

By combining high speed with low power consumption, Broockman says the Alereon
chip promises to offer a much more attractive solution for data transfer than
other wireless technologies.

“If you could transfer some amount of data with one pair of AA batteries in
the case of a UWB portable system, you’d need 10 sets of batteries in the case
of an 802.11n system, and probably 15 for an 802.11a or 802.11g system,” he
says.

For consumer products like MP3 players and digital cameras, that can be a very
attractive offering. “At these speeds and at these power levels, you’ll be
able to have an MP3 player that could transfer an entire song list in a couple
of seconds,” Broockman says. “Very unique applications get enabled by this.”

This week’s announcement is a significant boost for the MBOA SIG, which has
been trailing behind the DS-UWB standard in getting products to market. Earlier
this year, Freescale Semiconductor announced FCC approval
of the first
DS-UWB chipset
.

“They have stated on many, many occasions that they’re two years ahead of the
competition,” Broockman says. This announcement, he believes, changes the picture
significantly. “With the silicon we have, we don’t think it’s going to take
us two years to get this into full volume production,” he says. “They’re talking
about early next year, and we’re talking about fall of next year, so I would
say that they probably have a seven-month lead over us — but we’re five times
faster.”

Over time, Broockman says, one of the standards will have to win out — he doesn’t
think a compromise between the two is likely.

“Freescale’s already selling their product in the marketplace, and they have
no intention of changing that,” he says. “Their idea of a compromise is, ‘Accept
what we’re doing.’ And given that we’ve come to market with silicon, and we
expect some of our other startup compatriots to do the same shortly, there’s
not a big motivation for the MBOA companies to make the compromise, either.”

Jeff Goldman
Jeff Goldman
Jeff Goldman has been a technology journalist for more than 20 years and a contributor to TechnologyAdvice websites since 1999. He's covered security, networking, storage, mobile technologies and more during his time with TechnologyAdvice.

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