Alliance targets ultrawideband development

TES Electronic Solutions is to collaborate with Freescale Semiconductor to develop modular UWB reference platforms using Freescale's commercially available direct-sequence UWB solutions.

TES Electronic Solutions is to collaborate with Freescale Semiconductor to develop modular UWB reference platforms using Freescale's commercially available direct-sequence UWB (DS-UWB) solutions.

The collaboration is designed to allow TES to develop even further its expertise in wireless communications technologies, which already includes Bluetooth and ZigBee technology.

"UWB could become the most pervasive short-range wireless technology with the potential to address many more application areas than existing wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth", commented Wayne Gilbert, Strategic Marketing Director at TES.

"UWB can dramatically affect three main market areas: personal communications, consumer electronics and information technology".

"Today, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth have only made a significant impact in one of the three".

"By building on Freescale's UWB technology, TES will develop solutions that address all three market areas".

TES is one of the very few companies with market-leading experience in both the development and implementation of commercial wireless technologies such as Bluetooth and ZigBee.

With this experience and market knowledge, TES is uniquely positioned to develop UWB IP, development tools and design services that will help its customers to adopt the technology quickly and easily, and so develop a lead in their markets.

"Freescale's DS-UWB is being adopted by leading OEMs and vendors worldwide", said Martin Rofheart, Director of the UWB Operation at Freescale.

"TES has significant design resources and extensive experience in module development and, through our collaboration, is expected to be able to deliver DS-UWB-based solutions to OEM customers requiring high rate, wireless connectivity".

"As important, TES plans to leverage the broad software and interface support of Freescale's DS-UWB and can deliver 1394, USB 2.0 and TCP/IP UWB solutions for a variety of consumer electronics products".

UWB is a radio technology that allows the transfer of large amounts of data over short distances and is resistant to interference from other communication signals.

The technology is engineered to be capable of supporting a wide range of media-rich applications between PCs, mobile devices and other consumer electronic products.

It has the potential to free devices - such as DVD players, audio speakers, high definition television sets, PCs and printers - from the need to be connected by wires to record, play or exchange data.

Freescale's DS-UWB solutions are shipping to OEM customers worldwide for a variety of consumer electronics and computing products.

According to West Technology Research Solutions, the overall DS-UWB component market is expected to reach US $482 million by 2010 with initial deployment occurring in consumer entertainment, communications, and computing in the personal area network (PAN) arena.

By 2009, annual shipments for consumer electronics applications alone are expected to reach 38 million units, according to the firm's Q3 2005 report.

Currently, Freescale's UWB solutions provide a datarate of 110Mbit/s to wirelessly stream video, audio and data at a range of up to 20m.

With support for USB 2.0, IEEE1394 and TCP/IP, Freescale's UWB solutions provide OEMs and ODMs with a variety of interfaces to meet their design needs.

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