Major UWB Certification Groups Announce Merger
The WiMedia Alliance and the Multi-band OFDM Alliance Special Interest Group (MBOA-SIG), 2 of the primary groups that have been promoting ultra-wideband (UWB), announced Thurs. they're merging. The development gives UWB of the MBOA stripe the same standardization Wi-Fi and WiMax have already achieved. Microchip manufacturers and consumer electronics companies will have to look to only one organization for a certification logo. The new group will be called the WiMedia Alliance.
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The move could ultimately give the groups a more unified voice at the FCC, where a key vote on UWB is pending. Sources said Thurs. the FCC has been tight- lipped on how it would handle a waiver request from FCC radio frequency rules for the MBOA “frequency hopping” technology. MBOA is backed by several important high-tech players, including Intel and Texas Instruments.
The other major UWB technology, promoted by Freescale, formally part of Motorola, already received approval for its first DS-UWB radio. A merger between the MBOA groups and Freescale would have been considered a more significant development.
The timing of the announcement was tied to the Intel Developers’ Forum this week in San Francisco, rather than the pending FCC vote, sources said. One source said the 2 groups worked to complete the merger as quickly as they could and the Intel meeting seemed like a good time to make an announcement.
“It means there is one single organization that owns specification and compliance tests,” Robert Aiello, CEO of Staccato Communications and a WiMedia board member, told us. “Now that we have everything under one organization there is a one-stop shop.”
Aiello said the 2 organization had effectively divided the work that needed to completed on specifications and compliance. “[MBOA-SIG] was developing specifications for the physical level and the MAC [medium access controller] level,” he said. “WiMedia was doing the specifications for the upper levels and compliance.”
“One of the key successes of the UWB program is the enormous industry support and cooperation for developing the specifications, with close to 200 companies involved,” said Kevin Kahn, senior fellow with Intel’s Technology Group.
“It just makes sense to formally combine the groups,” said Glyn Roberts of STMicroelectronics, former pres. of the alliance. “There’s a great deal of common member activity and interest. And, the 2 organizations have been aggressively supporting the same technology, regulatory, and marketing goals for a while now.” UWB, which has been pushed by the FCC under Chmn. Powell, allows the transmission of data within a range of up to 10 meters at very high bandwidths.