Pulse~LINK Joins UWB Forum

This week, wireless technology provider Pulse~LINK announced that it had joined the UWB Forum as a Promoter Member. In joining the Forum, the company brings its CWave ultrawideband technology to join the DS-UWB technology promoted by fellow Forum member Freescale Semiconductor.

Bruce Watkins, Pulse~LINK's President and COO, says the company was attracted to the UWB Forum by the openness of its members to working with alternate UWB technologies.

"There was an understanding amongst the Forum members that there are probably cases when one flavor of ultrawideband might be viable for one particular application, whereas a different flavor's better suited for another application," Watkins says.

The UWB Forum, Watkins says, is now open to supporting a wide range of technologies—including the competing MultiBand OFDM solution promoted by the WiMedia Alliance. "We wanted to have a home where ultrawideband technology could come together, even in different flavors, and focus on common interests," Watkins says.

Pulse~LINK's CWave UWB (continuous wave ultrawideband) technology is distinctly different from the DS-UWB (direct sequence ultrawideband) technology that's thus far been promoted by the UWB Forum. "CWave starts with a narrowband signal," Watkins says. "And then the way we modulate that creates an energy emission that's ultrawideband in nature."

CWave's benefits, Watkins says, include decreased complexity, lower costs, greater scalability, and higher data rates—approaching 1 Gbps once the chipset is released. "The data rates we're currently demonstrating are the highest data rates in the world in ultrawideband—and we see an easily demonstrable roadmap to significantly increasing those data rates over the coming years," he says.

In the long run, Watkins suggests, different flavors of ultrawideband may simply gravitate to different applications. He sees CWave targeting high-bandwidth applications like HDMI and DVI, while technologies like MultiBand OFDM focus on wireless USB. "MultiBand OFDM is a good approach as well: it'll be good at doing certain things," he says.

And Watkins says he's optimistic about the prospects of finding common ground with the WiMedia Alliance, the group backing MultiBand OFDM. "I sense an increasing openness and understanding amongst many of the [WiMedia] members that these are issues we need to address together," he says. "We are having positive conversations with individuals—how that translates to company positions, and then [WiMedia's] official position, is really their decision to make."

To that end, the UWB Forum has formed a Common Signaling Mode Working Group, chaired by Pulse~LINK CTO John Santhoff. The working group, Watkins says, is focused on enabling coexistence between different technologies. "The first objective is to make sure that the signals from one flavor of ultrawideband are not interfering in any way with the signals from another flavor," he says.

Beyond that, Watkins says, there is a hope of developing some level of interoperability, possibly enabling data to be converted automatically to the best possible format for its particular requirements. "Who knows where that can go—but you don't find out where that can go if you don't engage in the conversation, and so we want to provide a forum for those kinds of conversations to proactively take place," he says.

Watkins points to the Bluetooth SIG's recent announcement of its interest in working with ultrawideband developers as an example of the potential for cooperation in the wireless industry. "The industry needs to come together and work positively and proactively with one another—and the Forum has opened their doors to do that," he says. "And that's why we went in."