Former top brass at Time Domain and an executive from semiconduct...

of its 27 employees are engineers from UWB developer Time Domain. Alereon said its first product will be commercially available in late 2004 and will be compatible with emerging IEEE standards for personal area networks, or 802.15.3a. U.S. equipment makers have recently drawn lines in a heated debate on UWB standards-setting at the IEEE concerning the draft standard for personal area networks. Alereon said it’s working with Texas Instruments, Intel, Motorola and Panasonic on a standard in this area. The company has financial backing from Austin Ventures and Pharos Capital. Eric Brockman, formerly of semiconductor firm Legerity, is CEO and former Time Domain executive Jim Baker is COO. Jeff Ross, also ex-Time Domain, is exec. vp. Alereon said its products will connect devices such as TVs, camcorders and digital cameras with UWB technology at “hundreds of megabits per second,” very low power and low cost. Debate at the IEEE has centered in part on a proposal backed by XtremeSpectrum and Motorola that is based on a “traditional” UWB system that occupies a very broad swathe of spectrum under FCC limits. Another, backed by Intel, Texas Instruments and others, relies on frequency-hopping technology, which also is permitted under the FCC order, according to its backers. Last month, XtremeSpectrum and Motorola asked the FCC to provide guidance on how to interpret parts of its UWB rules that covered compliance testing of certain frequency hopping modulations of UWB systems. Debate over the standards work has involved, partly, whether a frequency hopping system would have to be tested for compliance with the hopping function turned off. “They've asked us some questions and we've basically told them “go, have your own food fight in the standards bodies,” said FCC Office of Engineering & Technology Chief Edmond Thomas last week when asked by reporters about the standards debate on UWB. Thomas told reporters in a wide-ranging briefing at the FCC’s lab in Columbia, Md., that the agency hasn’t decided whether it would offer guidance in response to the request by XtremeSpectrum and Motorola.