Wireless USB Specification Nears Completion

The Wireless USB specification is expected to be completed at the end of March and the Multi-band OFDM Alliance (MBOA) medium access controller (MAC) is scheduled to be completed by midyear, according to an update from Intel provided at its Intel Developer's Forum in San Francisco.


Wireless USB will be one of the technology implementations that will use UWB as the radio technology. The goal of Wireless USB is to deliver the same ease of use and high speeds associated with USB 2.0, but without wires. To maintain the same usage and architecture as wired USB, the Wireless USB Promoter Group, of which Intel is a leading member, is defining the wireless USB specification. Intel said the first version of this specification will be completed by the end of this month. UWB is designed to transmit data within short range (up to 10 meters) at very high bandwidths (up to 480Mbps) while using little power. One of the main advantages of UWB is it does not interfere with other wireless technologies already in use, such as Wi-Fi, WiMAX and cellular wide-area communications.


The MBOA's MAC layer specification v1.0 is expected to be finalized by the end of June.http://developer.intel.com