Ultra-wideband, tomorrow's technology… tomorrow
Ahh, ultra-wideband. While we were busy partying at CES (yeah, right) apparently Freescale demoed their new XS110 UWB chipset on a cellphone—not bad, but is it a little late? Glenn Fleishman ruminates that perhaps UWB is something better suited for the wireless home (rather than that world outside the home we keep hearing about) where the ground's a little less paved. And no matter what, given UWB's huge technical hurdles (mainly the massive bandwidth dropoff over a relatively short distance) we do agree it's going to be hard to get it into handsets anytime soon: it's going to have to get in line behind a whole bunch of other wireless protocols, including 802.11a/b/g/n, WiMax, Bluetooth, and even the lowly ZigBee. Afterall, even though WiFi has been a part of our lives for years, we're only now starting to see the first cellphones with built-in 802.11b. It'll probably be a few years yet before UWB will make its mark.
[Via Wi-Fi Networking News]
