Pulse~Link Brings CWave Technology To UWB Forum
Carlsbad, CA -- Pulse~LINK announced it has joined the UWB Forum as a Promoter Member of the trade group. The UWB Forum is dedicated to ensuring that standards-based ultra wideband (UWB) products from multiple vendors -- regardless of their underlying UWB Air Interface -- are capable of peaceful coexistence with other UWB spectrum systems. The UWB Forum was formed to advance the emerging UWB communications industry for many forms of the technology including CWave, DS-UWB, and others wishing to achieve the common goal of providing interoperable end products.
To promote interoperability and coexistence of dissimilar UWB physical layers, the UWB Forum has formed a Common Signaling Mode (CSM) Working Group. Pulse~LINK CTO John Santhoff, who first proposed the concept before the IEEE 802.15.3 Task Group in Singapore of 2003, will chair this new group within the forum.
"The many flavors of UWB that are emerging in the marketplace require the UWB industry to establish rules for Spectrum Etiquette that insure fair and equal access to UWB spectrum for all users," Santhoff said. "The UWB Forum recognizes the fact that dissimilar UWB physical layers are going to exist for differing applications and is committed to insuring a positive consumer experience."
Just as various forms of narrowband communications offer different uses and applications, UWB is a form of communications with a variety of markets and applications that are entirely separate from one another. UWB applications currently being pursued range from short-range wireless USB cable replacements to through-wall imaging and location detection to applications that require gigabit bandwidth, such as wireless DVI and HDMI. Other applications include high data rate wireless data transfer for handhelds that require the lowest possible battery consumption per-bit and low data rate, longer-range applications such as those pursued under the new IEEE 802.15.4a group. Various UWB architectures are emerging to serve these different applications and markets.
"Pulse~LINK brings a demonstrated commitment of innovation and cooperation to the efforts of the UWB Forum" said Mike McCamon, executive director of the UWB Forum. "We are very excited to have a leader in the wireless market choose to join our member community as we continue to build momentum toward interoperable UWB products."
Pulse~LINK President and COO, Bruce Watkins, will also join the UWB Forum Board of Directors. "We are excited about the direction and objectives of the UWB Forum and pleased to contribute our full support," states Watkins. "The UWB Forum can serve many positive member interests, from collaborating on global regulatory issues to positively exploring the possibilities for the best set of merged features from different UWB physical layer proposals."
Additionally, Pulse~LINK's director of MAC development, Allen Heberling, was appointed as chair of the UWB Forum MAC Working Group. Pulse~LINKs MAC is already demonstrable at greater than 500 Mbps sustained throughput and will achieve 1 Gbps sustained throughput when Pulse~LINK's CWave chipset is released.
Pulse~LINK will bring its recently announced continuous wave (CWave) physical layer (see related story) to the UWB Forum. CWave UWB, while similar in some ways to DS-UWB, derives its signal from a phase shifted continuous waveform rather than using a pure impulse approach. The CWave architecture offers a low-complexity RF section using no analog mixers, up-conversion, or down-conversion, and features a low-power, high bandwidth ADC. Analog and RF complexity has been reduced and moved to the digital domain, with correlation, rake functions and more all being handled digitally. For optimized power consumption at Gigabit-plus data rates, the CWave architecture features LDPC Forward Error Correction. Collectively, these features bring CWave a low-complexity, high performance architecture and performance roadmap promising multi-Gigabit capacity and variable multi-band frequency agility to meet differing regulatory or performance objectives.
Source: Pulse~LINK