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News Release from: Texas Instruments (April 2001-March 2006)
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 11 December 2003
Royalty-free licences to accelerate UWB
drive
To accelerate adoption of ultrawideband technology in wireless personal area network applications, TI is to offer royalty-free licences for its patents relating to the proposed IEEE802.15.3a standard.
To accelerate adoption of emerging high-speed ultrawideband (UWB) technology in wireless personal area network (WPAN) applications, Texas Instruments is to offer royalty-free licences under TI essential patents directed toward the IEEE802.15.3a standard, pending ratification of the MultiBand OFDM Alliance's (MBOA) proposal as the new IEEE802.15.3a standard for high speed WPANs TI is a member of the MBOA, and is committed to enabling UWB technology
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 8 Nov 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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Moving forward, TI's royalty-free offering will enable consumer electronics and PC manufacturers to quickly deliver a variety of high-performance, interoperable wireless applications, such as streaming video from set-top boxes to HDTVs.
UWB is a wireless technology for transmitting digital data at very high rates over large bandwidths, all while using very low power.
UWB is ideally suited for wireless communications, particularly short-range and high-speed data transmissions for personal area network applications.
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"TI hopes to promote rapid industry adoption by offering royalty-free WPAN technology to the IEEE802.15.3a standardisation effort, since our technology will be crucial in enabling high-performance WPAN applications", said Yoram Solomon, general manager of TI's consumer networking business unit.
"This offering is an effort to remove potential barriers to commercial adoption of this technology.
Ensuring interoperability and having multiple silicon sources will help assure market growth of UWB technology".
TI's technology is designed to comply with all existing FCC requirements.
End users are expected to benefit from the deployment of high-rate TI-based UWB products as soon as early 2005.
TI's OFDM-based proposal emerged as the principal UWB technology candidate from the March 2003 IEEE802.15.3a Task Group meeting due to its ability to efficiently capture nearly 100% of the multipath energy, which results in having the best range, its ability to provide a robust link in the presence of multipath and interference, its relaxed RF and analogue requirements, and its ability to coexist with current and future wireless services.
These are all key requirements for many consumer electronic applications.
The TI proposal has become the basis for a merged proposal sponsored by a new group, the MultiBand OFDM Alliance, with membership of approximately 34 companies.
Essential TI patents directly associated with the MBOA proposal to the IEEE802.15.3a Task Group will be licensed royalty-free on a worldwide basis.
Technology licensing is extremely important to the UWB industry as it seeks to establish a clean and rapid path towards greater performance and functionality.
Adoption of the MBOA proposal will help the industry quickly roll out new UWB-enabled products.
"We're pleased to provide UWB component and system developers full access to standards-based, cost-effective solutions for higher performance", said Solomon.
"Licensing our UWB patents free of royalties is an important part of our strategy to provide a continuum of high-performance wireless connectivity.
Confirmation of this licensing offer will be contained in a written statement to the IEEE".
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