CES 2008
January 7-10, 2008
WIMEDIA TECHZONE
South Hall 3 / Booth #31642
Las Vegas, Nevada
Speaker: Stephen Wood
Panel Title: “The World of Wireless” More Info..
MWG F2F – 2008 Messaging Strategy
and Plan Development
January 22, 2008
Portland, Oregon
Mobile World
Congress 2008
February 11-14, 2008
WIMEDIA TECHZONE
Hall 2 / Booth #A73
Barcelona, Spain More Info..
18th WiMedia Member Meeting & Open House
March 25-27, 2008
San Francisco Airport Marriott
Burlingame, California More Info..
We hope you enjoyed this issue. If you'd like to comment on this issue or, if you'd like to see additional features or topics covered in future editions of the WiMedia Alliance Member Newsletter, please email your suggestions to .
Tradeshows & Events
Q3 2007 started off with a bang as our partner organization, the USB-IF, announced the first six end-products to receive Wireless USB Certification in July. The weeks following brought a series of articles and media briefings focusing on the introduction of UWB into the market.
In September, WiMedia sent speakers to Wireless China and the Antenna Systems/Short Range Wireless Conference. Momentum continued as WiMedia exhibited in the Certified Wireless USB Community at IDF in San Francisco. WiMedia members Alereon, Ellysis, LeCroy, LucidPort, NEC, Staccato Communications, Stonestreet One, Synopsis, Wipro, WiQuest, and Wisair participated in the WiMedia booth and demonstrated their latest applications based on the common radio platform. The Alliance also leveraged IDF presence to announce the registration of six additional PHYs from members Alereon, Realtek, Tzero and Wisair.
RealTek illustrating the benefits of uwb technology to potential customers Click to Enlarge
WELCOME WAGON!
Twenty-five new members joined the Alliance in Q3 of 2007. These additions bring the total membership to 348 members as of September 30, 2007.
Please join us in welcoming the newest WiMedia members!
Ultrawideband is Coming (Personal Computer World, 9/7/2007)
UWB Seizes the USB Terrain…And That’s Just the Start (Electronic Design, 9/11/2007)
High-Speed Bluetooth Takes a Bite Out of Certified Wireless USB (Electronic Design, 9/11/2007)
WiMedia Alliance Announces Second Round of Registered Phys (Converge! Network Digest, 9/25/2007)
If any members of the WiMedia Alliance have any press releases that include a mention of WiMedia or UWB technology, please send a final copy of the announcement to the PR team at
and we will be happy to post it to the Members Releases section on the WiMedia web page.
MEMBER CORNER Brad Hosler Memorial
WiMedia regrets the loss of Brad Hosler, who passed away on August 31, 2007, at his home in Portland, Oregon, after several years of battling cancer. Brad was chairman of WiMedia’s certification and interoperability work and played a pivotal role in developing UWB both in WiMedia and in the USB IF.
Brad joined Intel in 1980 when personal computers were a novel and untested technology. He was a core contributor to the USB 1.0 initiative where he led the host controller specification and implemented an end-user focused USB logo compliance program. Spanning the next decade, Brad drove the wired and wireless USB evolutions. For both programs he set architectural standards and managed the team which delivered the technology and logo compliance programs.
Brad received two Intel Achievement Awards (Intel’s highest award), one in 2003 for the USB 2.0 extension and another in 2006 for the architecture and enabling of the Wireless USB protocol over the Ultra Wideband (UWB) spectrum. The success of the USB interface and market of platforms and peripherals that sell in multiple billion units today is a measure of his impact on our industry.
Even more than Brad’s accomplishments, it is the credible, straightforward, and pragmatic manner in which he led collaboration across the industry that is most memorable. His personal integrity and sincerity led to a remarkable degree of goodwill, trust, and personal bonds with everyone who knew him. His friends and associates in WiMedia and at Intel will miss him deeply.
TECHNICAL BRIEF WiMedia Timing Analysis & Clock Accuracy
Both the WiMedia MAC layer and Wireless USB rely on rigorous timing accuracy for several key aspects of the protocol behavior including MAS reservations and Next MMC time. In beacon protocol, devices synchronize using a common Beacon Period Start Time (BPST) and are required to transmit their beacon within a specific time slot. Beacon slot collisions can occur if a device’s clock drift causes it to transmit while another device is sending its beacon.
The WiMedia MAC protocol operates in a distributed manner and there is no central entity that manages device synchronization. Instead, each device keeps track of its own BPST. In order to synchronize to an existing beacon period, each device must continually adjust its BPST to match that of the slowest device in the beacon period. When all devices do this correctly, the aggregate behavior is that the devices in the beacon period remain synchronized with each other. While WiMedia defines a guard time to accommodate for minor drift between neighboring devices, beacon collisions caused by devices that fail to maintain timing margins can be difficult to identify. Test tools that are used to evaluate timing compliance must have better clock accuracy than the devices they are testing.
The specification requires beacon period intervals to be between 65536-1.4 and 65536+1.4 microseconds. If the measurement device has nominal drift of 20ppm, it may fail to identify cases where beacon interval does not meet the requirement. To ensure measurement equipment can accurately identify devices that fail to meet beacon interval-timing specs, it should have an extremely high quality crystal oscillator. The LeCroy UWBTracer is rated at better than 4PPM nominal drift (worst case). The figure above illustrates how this type of accuracy allows developers to identify errors within ± 24PPM of normative timing.
WiQuest Customers Begin Shipping UWB-enabled Consumer Products
The third quarter of 2007 was a very active and successful quarter for WiQuest Communications with the successful achievement of Wireless USB Certification for its chipset and WiMedia Platform Certification of the hub and adapter reference designs.
WiQuest customers - including Belkin, Dell, D-Link and Lenovo – also achieved Wireless USB certification of consumer products based on WiQuest’s total solution.
The USB-IF certification set the stage for first product shipments by these same companies. Shipping products include the first 4 notebook PCs from Dell containing Certified Wireless USB. Lenovo began shipping a Certified Wireless USB-enabled ThinkPad notebook PC.
Consumers can now purchase a Belkin or D-Link adapter and hub from retail sites as well as from Dell and Lenovo on-line sites.
Toshiba began shipping the world’s first wireless port replicator containing WiQuest’s WiDV Technology for Wireless Digital Video.
These companies represent 3 of the top 4 notebook PC manufacturers and the top 2 PC peripheral companies.
TECHNICAL BRIEF
