Wireless USB - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Wireless USB is a short-range, high-bandwidth wireless

Wireless

Wireless telecommunications is the transfer of information between two or more points that are not physically connected. Distances can be short, such as a few meters for television remote control, or as far as thousands or even millions of kilometers for deep-space radio communications...

radio communication protocol created by the Wireless USB Promoter Group. Wireless USB is sometimes abbreviated as "WUSB", although the USB Implementers Forum

USB Implementers Forum

The USB Implementers Forum is a non-profit organisation to promote and support the Universal Serial Bus. Its main activities are the promotion and marketing of USB, Wireless USB, USB On-The-Go, and the maintenance of the specifications, as well as a compliance program.It was formed in 1995 by the...

discourages this practice and instead prefers to call the technology "Certified Wireless USB" to distinguish it from the competing UWB standard. Wireless USB is based on the WiMedia Alliance

WiMedia Alliance

The WiMedia Alliance is a non-profit open industry association that promotes and enables the rapid adoption, regulation, standardization and multi-vendor interoperability of ultra-wideband worldwide....

's Ultra-WideBand

Ultra-wideband

Ultra-wideband is a radio technology that can be used at very low energy levels for short-range high-bandwidth communications by using a large portion of the radio spectrum. UWB has traditional applications in non-cooperative radar imaging...

(UWB) common radio platform, which is capable of sending 480 Mbit/s at distances up to 3 meters and 110 Mbit/s at up to 10 meters. It was designed to operate in the 3.1 to 10.6 GHz frequency range, although local regulatory policies may restrict the legal operating range for any given country.

Uses

Wireless USB is used in game controller

Game controller

A game controller is a device used with games or entertainment systems used to control a playable character or object, or otherwise provide input in a computer game. A controller is typically connected to a game console or computer by means of a wire, cord or nowadays, by means of wireless connection...

s, printers, scanners, digital camera

Digital camera

A digital camera is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording images via an electronic image sensor. It is the main device used in the field of digital photography...

s, portable media player

Portable media player

A portable media player or digital audio player, is a consumer electronics device that is capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, video, documents, etc. the data is typically stored on a hard drive, microdrive, or flash memory. In contrast, analog portable audio...

s, hard disk drives and flash drives. Kensington released a Wireless USB universal docking station in August, 2008. It is also suitable for transferring parallel video streams, while utilizing the Wireless USB over Ultra-wideband

Ultra-wideband

bandwidth.

Wireless USB vs. 60 GHz

Few issues differentiate Wireless USB from the use of the 60 GHz band as promoted by the Wireless Gigabit Alliance

Wireless Gigabit Alliance

The Wireless Gigabit Alliance is an organization promoting the adoption of multi-gigabit speed wireless communications technology operating over the unlicensed 60 GHz frequency band....

Line of Sight: at 60 GHz, radio communication is blocked by any intervening object, which implies the need for open line of sight
Line-of-sight propagation
Line-of-sight propagation refers to electro-magnetic radiation or acoustic wave propagation. Electromagnetic transmission includes light emissions traveling in a straight line...

. Wireless USB is based on the UWB
Ultra-wideband
Ultra-wideband is a radio technology that can be used at very low energy levels for short-range high-bandwidth communications by using a large portion of the radio spectrum. UWB has traditional applications in non-cooperative radar imaging...

platform, which operates in the 3.1 to 10.6 GHz frequency range, and thus can pass through intervening bodies.
Mobility: the 60 GHz technology is appealing to the wireless video market because it is supposed to deliver multi-gigabit-speed wireless communications. In order to support such heavy demands, the underlying MAC
Media Access Control
The media access control data communication protocol sub-layer, also known as the medium access control, is a sublayer of the data link layer specified in the seven-layer OSI model , and in the four-layer TCP/IP model...

layer should be able to process this huge amount of data. For these requirements, the 60 GHz-based solutions will need higher power consumption, and bigger chips, which are less suitable for mobile units or devices.

Development

The Wireless USB Promoter Group was formed in February 2004 to define the Wireless USB specification. The group consists of Agere Systems

Agere Systems

Agere Systems Inc. was an integrated circuit components company based in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Spun out of Lucent Technologies in 2002, Agere was merged into LSI Corporation in 2007....

(now merged with LSI Corporation

LSI Corporation

LSI Corporation is an electronics company based in Milpitas, California that designs semiconductors and software that accelerate storage and networking in datacenters and mobile networks.-History:...

), Hewlett-Packard

Hewlett-Packard

Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...

, Intel, Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

, NEC Corporation, Philips

Philips

Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....

and Samsung

Samsung

The Samsung Group is a South Korean multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea...

.

In May 2005, the Wireless USB Promoter Group announced the completion of the Wireless USB specification.

In June 2006, five companies showed the first multi-vendor interoperability demonstration of Wireless USB. A laptop with an Intel host adapter using an Alereon

Alereon

Alereon, Inc, is a fabless semiconductor company. It uses ultrawideband radio technology to develop Certified Wireless USB and WiMedia Alliance compliant UWB integrated circuits . Headquartered in Austin, Texas, United States, Alereon also has offices in Korea and Hong Kong...

PHY was used to transfer high definition video from a Philips

Philips

Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....

wireless semiconductor solution with a Realtek

Realtek

Realtek Semiconductor Corp. , a fabless IC design house situated in the Hsinchu Science Park, Hsinchu, Taiwan, was founded in October 1987, and subsequently approved as a listed company on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in 1998...

PHY, all using Microsoft

Microsoft

Windows XP

Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...

drivers developed for Wireless USB.

In October 2006 the U.S. Federal Communications Commission

Federal Communications Commission

The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...

(FCC) approved the first complete Host Wire Adapter (HWA) and Device Wire Adapter (DWA) wireless USB solution from WiQuest Communications

WiQuest Communications

WiQuest Communications, Inc., was the leading fabless semiconductor company that designed and developed complete WiMedia-based Certified Wireless USB solutions focused on high-speed, short-range applications. WiQuest’s complete solution offered chipsets, software, and reference designs...

for both outdoor and indoor use. The first retail product was shipped by IOGEAR using Alereon

Alereon

, Intel and NEC silicon in mid-2007. Around the same time, Belkin, Dell, Lenovo and D-Link began shipping products that incorporated WiQuest technology. These products included embedded cards in the notebook PCs or Hub/Adapter solutions for those PCs that do not currently include Wireless USB. In 2008, a new Wireless USB Docking Station from Kensington was made available through Dell. This product was unique as it was the first product on the market to support video and graphics over a USB connection, by using DisplayLink

DisplayLink

DisplayLink is a semiconductor and software startup company. DisplayLink USB graphics technology is designed to connect computers and displays using USB and Wireless USB, allowing multiple displays to be connected to a single PC...

USB graphics technology. Kensington's Docking Station enables wireless connectivity between a notebook PC and an external monitor, speakers, and existing wired USB peripherals. Imation announced Q408 availability of a new external Wireless HDD. Both of these products are based on WiQuest technology.

On March 16, 2009, the WiMedia Alliance

WiMedia Alliance

announced it is entering into technology transfer agreements for the WiMedia Ultra-wideband (UWB) specifications. WiMedia will transfer all current and future specifications, including work on future high speed and power optimized implementations, to the Bluetooth

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is a proprietary open wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks with high levels of security...

Special Interest Group (SIG), Wireless USB Promoter Group and the USB Implementers Forum

USB Implementers Forum

. After the successful completion of the technology transfer, marketing and related administrative items, the WiMedia Alliance will cease operations. In October 2009 the Bluetooth Special Interest Group has dropped development of UWB as part of the alternative MAC/PHY, Bluetooth 3.0/High Speed solution. A small, but significant, number of former WiMedia

WiMedia Alliance

members had not and would not sign up to the necessary agreements for the IP

Intellectual property

Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...

transfer. The Bluetooth group is now turning its attention from UWB to 60 GHz

Extremely high frequency

Extremely high frequency is the highest radio frequency band. EHF runs the range of frequencies from 30 to 300 gigahertz, above which electromagnetic radiation is considered to be low infrared light, also referred to as terahertz radiation...

.

On September 29, 2010 version 1.1 of Wireless USB specification was announced. It delivers several backwards-compatible improvements: UWB upper band support for frequencies 6 GHz and above, improved power management and consumption, and support for NFC

Near Field Communication

Near field communication, or NFC, allows for simplified transactions, data exchange, and wireless connections between two devices in proximity to each other, usually by no more than a few centimeters. It is expected to become a widely used system for making payments by smartphone in the United States...

and proximity based association.

Compatibility options for older hardware

The WUSB architecture allows up to 127 devices to connect directly to a host. Because there are no wires or ports, there is no longer a need for hubs.

However, to facilitate migration from wired to wireless, WUSB introduced a new Device Wire Adapter (DWA) class. Sometimes referred to as a "WUSB hub", a DWA allows existing USB 2.0 devices to be used wirelessly with a WUSB host.

WUSB host capability can be added to existing PCs through the use of a Host Wire Adapter (HWA). The HWA is a USB 2.0 device that attaches externally to a desktop or laptop's USB port or internally to a laptop's MiniCard interface.

WUSB also supports dual-role devices (DRDs), which in addition to being a WUSB device, can function as a host with limited capabilities. For example, a digital camera could act as a device when connected to a computer and as a host when transferring pictures directly to a printer.

Relation to ultra-wideband (UWB)

A common source of confusion is about the relationship between WUSB, WiMedia, and UWB. The UWB and WUSB technologies are not the same, and the terms WUSB and UWB are not synonymous.

UWB is a general term for a new type of radio communication using pulses of energy which spread emitted Radio Frequency energy over 500 MHz+ of spectrum or exceeding 20% fractional bandwidth within the frequency range of 3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz as defined by the FCC ruling issued for UWB in Feb. 2002. UWB is not specific to WiMedia or any other company or group and there are in fact a number of groups and companies developing UWB technology totally unrelated to WiMedia. Some companies use UWB for ground penetrating radar, through wall radar and yet another company Pulse-LINK uses it as part of a whole home entertainment network using UWB for transmission over both wired and wireless media. WUSB is a protocol promulgated by the USB-IF

USB Implementers Forum

that uses WiMedia's UWB radio platform. Other protocols that have announced their intention to use WiMedia's UWB radio platform include Bluetooth and the WiMedia Logical Link Control Protocol.

Comparison of digital RF systems

Wireless USB vs. 802.11a/b/g & Bluetooth
Specification	Wireless USB Specification Rev. 1.1	Bluetooth 4.0 (proposed)	Wi-Fi Wi-Fi Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20... (IEEE 802.11n)	Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
Frequency band	3.1 GHz–10.6 GHz	UWB Ultra-wideband Ultra-wideband is a radio technology that can be used at very low energy levels for short-range high-bandwidth communications by using a large portion of the radio spectrum. UWB has traditional applications in non-cooperative radar imaging... (not decided)	2.4 GHz/5 GHz	2.4 GHz
Bandwidth	53-480 Mbit/s	53-480 Mbit/s	Max. 600 Mbit/s	Max. 3 Mbit/s
Distance	3-10 m	unknown distance	100 m	1–100 m, depending on output
Modulation	MB-OFDM	MB-OFDM	DSSS, DBPSK, DQPSK, CCK Complementary code keying Complementary Code Keying is a modulation scheme used with wireless networks that employ the IEEE 802.11b specification. In 1999, CCK was adopted to supplement the Barker code in wireless digital networks to achieve data rate higher than 2 Mbit/s at the expense of shorter distance... , OFDM	GFSK
Standardization	September 2010	pre-standard	September 2009	July 2007

Competitors

Other forms of USB over wireless exist, such as those based on the competing direct sequence UWB technology by Cable-Free USB. The same is also true for other radio frequency based wire replacement systems which can carry USB. The result is that the name Certified Wireless USB was adopted to allow consumers to identify which products would be adherent to the standard and would support the correct protocol and data rates.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Uses

Wireless USB vs. 60 GHz

Development

Compatibility options for older hardware

Relation to ultra-wideband (UWB)

Comparison of digital RF systems

Competitors

See also

External links