The future wireless standard for home digital equipment is likely to involve either the WiFi-based IEEE 802.11n or the IEEE Ultra-WideBand standard (UWB), explains Electronics Asia.
The 802.11n standard, built on previous 802.11 (WiFi) standards, adds MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) antennas for increased data throughput and range. Two standards camps are at odds; TgnSync and Wwise with a third camp, MITMOT trying to merge the two proposals together by November for faster, longer range WiFi networks.
The IEEE 802.15.3a standard, meanwhile, was designed to replace Bluetooth for fast, close range (10-30 feet) connections. Inexpensive, low power UWB chips could replace USB and Firewire cables in a few years. Ultra WideBand also has its standards battles with Multiband OFDM (MB-OFDM), which “hops” an OFDM signal from one band to another, versus Direct Sequence UWB (DS-UWB), which skips the 5 Ghz band entirely.
Now, according to Electronics Asia, there is talk of merging MIMO WiFi and UWB into a single approach for both short range connectivity and longer range WiFi networks.
The boundary between 11n and UWB has begun to blur rapidly. As a result of technological refinements to 11n during the competition to become the industry standard, new concepts have been incorporated to provide significant improvements in speed and reduced power consumption. At last 11n technology is approaching the realm of portable equipment application, which until now has been thought to be the domain of UWB.
Whether this is wishful thinking on the part of one of the promoters is not entirely clear. But it’s a great article, with lots of illustrated explainations on how these proposals differ.
