Friday, April 16, 2004
Wireless USB To Bring Greater Convenience
Posted by Suhit Gupta in "HARDWARE" @ 12:00 PM
"Imagine if all the devices in a home office -- such as printer, scanner, external hard drive, and digital camera -- could be connected to your PC without any wires. Imagine if all the components for an entire home entertainment center could be set up and connected without a single wire ... These are just some of the possible scenarios for high-speed wireless USB (WUSB) connectivity, the latest technology developed to bring even greater convenience and mobility to devices.
Universal serial bus (USB) technology has been a popular connection type for PCs and it's migrating into consumer electronic (CE) and mobile devices. Now this high-speed and effective connection interface is unwiring to provide the functionality of wired USB without the burden of cables."
The Wireless USB Promoter Group was set up earlier this year to come up with the WUSB specification which is slated to target a bandwidth of 480 Mbps, and they have apparently made quite a bit of headway in this area. This specification maintains the same usage and architecture as wired USB with a high-speed host-to-device connection. "WUSB specifications will be based on ultra wideband (UWB) radio efforts by the MultiBand OFDM Alliance (MBOA) and WiMedia Alliance, both open industry associations that promote personal-area range wireless connectivity and interoperability among multimedia devices in a networked environment." The WUSB host can logically connect to a maximum of 127 WUSB devices.
There really isn't a time frame that has been defined by the group yet, however, the article does give a lot of information on the architecture and specification of this technology. I, for one, would definitely welcome technology like this. I have almost 16 USB devices around my computer right now and it would be great to get rid of all those pesky wires. (Hmm, all the remains is the research for wireless power :))
Universal serial bus (USB) technology has been a popular connection type for PCs and it's migrating into consumer electronic (CE) and mobile devices. Now this high-speed and effective connection interface is unwiring to provide the functionality of wired USB without the burden of cables."
The Wireless USB Promoter Group was set up earlier this year to come up with the WUSB specification which is slated to target a bandwidth of 480 Mbps, and they have apparently made quite a bit of headway in this area. This specification maintains the same usage and architecture as wired USB with a high-speed host-to-device connection. "WUSB specifications will be based on ultra wideband (UWB) radio efforts by the MultiBand OFDM Alliance (MBOA) and WiMedia Alliance, both open industry associations that promote personal-area range wireless connectivity and interoperability among multimedia devices in a networked environment." The WUSB host can logically connect to a maximum of 127 WUSB devices.
There really isn't a time frame that has been defined by the group yet, however, the article does give a lot of information on the architecture and specification of this technology. I, for one, would definitely welcome technology like this. I have almost 16 USB devices around my computer right now and it would be great to get rid of all those pesky wires. (Hmm, all the remains is the research for wireless power :))
