As the world continues to progress toward a ubiquitously wireless future, the next big leap forward represents the need to combine both higher bandwidth and seamless interoperability between disparate devices. The widespread adoption and success of industry standards such as wired USB and Bluetooth has already shown that providing seamless connectivity between devices can create a flood of new applications and usage models. More than one billion USB ports will ship in 2006, representing an ongoing growth rate of 25%, while Bluetooth volumes in 2006 will exceed 500 million units with a growth rate of more than 30%.

By leveraging ultrawideband (UWB) technology, the next generations of these standards will not only overcome existing limitations; they also will share an underlying communications platform that can support other widely used communications standards, such as Internet protocol.

Adoption of an industry-wide specification for UWB, based on the WiMedia Alliance approach, using multiband orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (MB-OFDM), has now set the stage for rapid widespread implementation of next-generation Bluetooth 3.0 and Certified Wireless USB at speeds of up to 480 Mbps.

Implemented as a short-range wireless personal area network (WPAN) supporting multiple protocols, UWB provides a complementary technology that integrates with widely deployed Wi-Fi LAN-oriented networks, thereby enabling seamless high-speed information flow between all of the users' local devices, which further enhances the value of external network connection.

A critical factor for achieving the full potential of these short-range communications applications will be the ability of system designers to cost-effectively embed complete WiMedia-enabled UWB solutions within a variety of mobile and handheld devices. In addition, they will need rapid development cycles in order to succeed. Instead of facing a period of market evangelization, as occurred with Bluetooth and wired USB, the movement toward next-generation UWB-based wireless solutions is likely to be constrained only by product developers' ability to quickly achieve stringent performance, cost, power and reliability objectives.

The following sections provide a brief overview of UWB technology followed by an exploration of specific architectural and implementation issues, with the objectives of optimizing performance and reliability while reducing cost, size and power usage. Also addressed are methods for optimizing multiprotocols over WiMedia UWB in order to leverage applications interoperability and lay a forward path for future enhancements.

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