Hoping to make a dent in the emerging ultra-wideband (UWB) market, the Multiband OFDM Alliance (MBOA) special interest group (SIG) unveiled its completed physical layer (PHY) 1.0 specifications at this week’s Electronica in Munich, Germany. To ensure interoperability among its users, the MBOA group said that it is making its PHY specs available to its 170 member companies. Meanwhile, the group is also developing the media access control (MAC) specs for the technology, which is expected to be ready by the year-end.

According to analysts, it does not look like there will be a compromise between the two camps in this battle between the MBOA and direct-sequence, code-division multiple access (CD-CDMA) headed by Freescale Semiconductor, for a unified UWB standard under the management of the IEEE 802.15.3a task group.

To demonstrate pre-production interoperability, some 16 silicon developers are now developing customer samples. “This achievement by the MBOA-SIG is the result of over 100 engineers from more than 50 companies working together to create these specs. Altogether, more than 200,000 engineer man-hours and an unrelenting peer review process have yielded a rock-solid specification,” said Stephen Wood, strategic marketing manager with Intel's R&D division and a member of the MBOA-SIG steering committee. “We are proceeding quickly to ensure interoperable consumer products in mass production.”

The MBOA-SIG has established an extensive ecosystem of valuable companies throughout the value-chain and is working in close association with the WiMedia Alliance, the Wireless USB Promoter Group, and the 1394 Trade Association to bring a variety of interoperable products to market in 2005. Application targets range from Wireless USB and Wireless 1394 for PCs, printers, cameras, and other peripherals, to streaming video for PVRs, displays, and other consumer devices, as well as high-speed IP connections via the WiMedia WiNet PAL.

“This is definitely a milestone that has been achieved quicker than expected,” said Joyce Putscher, director at market research firm In-Stat/MDR. “This progress bodes well for the efforts underway to complete the Wireless USB specification, since WUSB will demand much from the MBOA specifications.”

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