WiMedia Alliance

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The WiMedia Alliance is a not-for-profit open industry association that promotes and enables the rapid adoption, regulation, standardization and multi-vendor interoperability of ultra-wideband (UWB) worldwide.

WiMedia UWB is the basis for the industry’s first UWB standards. The WiMedia Ultra-Wideband (UWB) Common Radio Platform incorporates media access control (MAC) layer and physical (PHY) layer specifications based on Multi-band Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MB-OFDM). The solution enables shortrange multimedia file transfers at data rates of 480 Mbit/s and beyond with low power consumption, and operates in the 3.1 to 10.6 GHz UWB spectrum. WiMedia UWB is optimized for the personal computer (PC), consumer electronics (CE), mobile device and automotive market segments.

The WiMedia UWB platform is also optimized for complementary wireless personal area network (WPAN) technologies such as Bluetooth 3.0, Certified Wireless USB, the 1394 Trade Group’s “Wireless FireWire” Protocol Adaptation Layer (PAL) and Wireless TCP/IP. Different wireless protocols can operate within the same wireless personal area network without interference. In addition to these, many other industry protocols can reside on top of the WiMedia UWB platform. Those include Ethernet, DVI and HDMI. Presently, the WiMedia PHY specification has an over-the-air uncoded capability of more than 480 Mbit/s; the specification is highly scalable and will ultimately support wireless DVI and HDMI, operating at Gbit/s data rates.

IEEE_802.15.3a was an attempt to provide a higher speed UWB PHY enhancement amendment to IEEE 802.15.3 for applications which involve imaging and multimedia. IEEE 802.15.3a UWB standardisation attempt failed due to contrast between [WiMedia Alliance] and [UWB Forum]. On January 19, 2006 IEEE 802.15.3a task group (TG3a) members voted to withdraw the December 2002 project authorization request (PAR) that initiated the development of high data rate UWB standards. The IEEE 802.15.3a most commendable achievement was the consolidation of 23 UWB PHY specifications into two proposals using : Multi-Band Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MB-OFDM) UWB, supported by the WiMedia Alliance, and Direct Sequence - UWB (DS-UWB), supported by the UWB Forum.

On December 8, 2005 Ecma International released two international ISO-based specifications (ECMA-368 and ECMA-369) for UWB technology based on the WiMedia Ultra-Wideband (UWB) Common Radio Platform. Ecma will submit the standard to ISO/IEC JTC 1 for fast track approval.

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