The wireless USB protocol will be completed by the end of March and the access controller specification should be approved by the end of the year. Wireless USB is designed to be used at ranges of less than 10 metres and will allow peak data speeds of 480Mbps. Also, Intel has unveiled its first proposals for 802.11s, a new mesh wireless networking standard.
Wireless USB set to kill off Bluetooth?
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The key factor here is power consumption. For it to kill off bluetooth in things that dont require the extra speed and run off batteries, like phones, keyboards, ect… it will have to use less power.
Speeking of wireless USB and bluetooth, when will the iPod come with bluetooth/wireless USB capabilities?
You don’t seriously think that someone has an answer for you.
what if I have a cool new BT cell phone dock system? well I drop my cell phone in the dock and the BT 2.4 GHz phone picks up the signal and makes all the calls from the cell phone service…. but it needs 100 Meters to be fully trouble free….
and yes, power consumption is certainly an issue for other devices.
Got to get the word out to the hardware folks that driver transparency == market share.
I think the usage of wireless USB is in a totally different area.
Areas like audio and video streaming between to stationary devices(WLAN has much more overhead compare to WUSB).
There is not use for such a high bandwidth for wireless devices, at least not until the battery usage is down to the levels of bluetooth.
I briefly skimmed the white paper but did not find any power specs.
I agree with jace that power is the key issue. Don’t you remember all those bluetooth nay-sayers — “Why would someone use bluetooth when you have wifi?” Boy were they wrong — How many cell phones have wifi?!
If the wireless USB has power demands like wifi, then this “Wireless usb is going to kill bluetooth” is nothing but FUD.
When I read stuff like this, I think do people really think the people behind bluetooth as soooo stupid as to create inferior technology?! My point being is that there has to be a “catch” with wireless usb; otherwise, bluetooth would be doing it too.
Wht purpose does Wireless USB serve? It’s way to much bandwidth for keyboards, mice, etc. For downloading data from DV camera’s, and to/from ipods, wouldn’t 802.11g(i) work far better, and the drive would be a node on the network.
Bluetooth suffered from what can it do problems early on. Bluetooth is designed for lower power devices and short range. Wireless keyboards, mice, cell phone’s, etc. You don’t need high bandwidth for those, just low power consumption.
umm… 802.11g is 56Mbps… USB2 and firewire are 480/400 Mbps respectively. the problem with wireless USB for cameras and such is the power usage and antenna/transmitters…. I think you might see base stations, but it will not be integrated into the device itself
umm… 802.11g is 56Mbps…
Actually, it is 54Mbps not 56.
Got to get the word out to the hardware folks that driver transparency == market share.
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How can you justify that argument when Linux, with it’s open (in most cases) drivers has an infinitesimal marketshare?
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The openness of drivers is important to such a small percentage of computer users as to be irrelevant in most hardware manufacturers’ business decisions.
But how devices that require power/electricity will be powered through the air? Take USB dial-up modems for example or scanners such as the Canon LIDE20, LIDE30 etc.
Is the wireless signal carrying current too? Also, doesn’t the other end (the device) require a receiver?
What is the difference of 802.11s vs. 802.16. I thought the upcoming 802.16 (WiMax) surpasses everything else. Is it because of of the high power consumption of 802.16, 802.11s is proposed?
802.16 is for fixed outdoor wireless broadband. In order to get reasonable range, people will run 802.16 at higher power.
802.11 is for mobile indoor wireless LANs. 802.11s seems to be an improvement to WDS, which is nice but won’t affect the majority of 802.11 users.
You are correct about consumers, though you don’t have to be trollish about it. However, wireless USB isn’t a consumer-driven technology, just like BlueTooth wasn’t consumer-driven. The adoption depends entirely on companies, and at the level of small devices with embedded OSes, driver transparency and freedom are huge issues. Linux has significant market share there, and so do many unusual proprietary OSes. You have to make it easy for all of them.
“Radio system power (power used only by the radio) will be expected to meet the most stringent requirements where mobile and handheld battery life is important. For example, typical PDAs use 250–400 mW without a radio connection, while typical cellular phones use 200 mW–300 mW with the primary WAN radio. Adding a WUSB radio should not increase power requirements any more than existing wireless technologies already employed today.
Battery-powered operation requires reasonable battery life: 2–5 days for highly mobile devices and several months for intermittently used devices like remote controls. WUSB, based on the MultiBand OFDM Alliance (MBOA) radio, will strive to meet these standards. The power target for WUSB radio will be introduced at less than 300 mW and drive to a target of 100 mW over time.”
From: http://deviceforge.com/articles/AT9015145687.html
It doesn’t seem like the community really needs wireless USB. Judging by what I’m seeing here:
http://www.bluez.org/ — the official Linux Bluetooth stack
http://www.holtmann.org/linux/bluetooth/ — bunch ‘o docs
http://www.holtmann.org/linux/bluetooth/devices.html — HCL
it looks like we’re all set.
from what i have seen the wusb require the pc to be a kind of traffics hub, figures given that it comes from one of the biggest pc chip makers out there. one of the great things about bluetooth is that its unit to unit, and only recently have something similar been seen for usb, and then only with limited abilitys.
allready with bluetooth you can use it to connect all kinds of devices together only by them being bluetooth enabled (as long as they didnt cripple any of the BT abilitys, like on some treos i have been hearing about). and i can share files, contacts, connections, all kinds of stuff across them. on wusb it have to be buildt on top as wsub is just a wireless serial link. sure, stuff like hid and usb storage will carry over but the rest of the features bluetooth allready have will need similar standards, fast.
and there is a new revision in the works that allow for multicasting of traffic so that you can have one source, many destinations.
basicly, it seems that wusb will be pc centric while bluetooth will continue to be device agnostic. if it have a brain then it can connect. think about it this way, have a bt camera and a bt phone. use the phones connection to mail or mms some photo straight of the camera.
allso, wusb is useing a frequenzy area that able to act as close proximity equivalent to xrays. like i wasnt allready worryed about getting my genes messed up from overuse of my cellphone
(just jokeing around, the power output will most likely be nowhere near what you need to get a xray effect)
forgot to say that im allso a bit worryed about security. if its supposed to be as simple to set up as usb is today then security is going to be even worse then on bluetooth is today. most likely some braniac with a dark side will come up with a pda, phone or laptop app that is able to sniff and connect to passing wusb devices that someone forgot to turn off. yes i know the same can happen with bluetooth but there you have things like pairing and so on buildt in. i cant say they have talked much about the security aspect of wireless usb bnut a lot about its supposed ease of use, kinda reminds me of our favorite os maker…
There are times that I really wanna cut off my monitor cable and make it wireless if I can because it’s really very annoying sometimes. In office, sometimes I use my monitor anywhere within 10 metres, then this wireless USB can serve me well enough. Also, 5.1 speakers without wires but of course they have to plug power too. But then you can plug anywhere within 10 metres. The key point they sell, if power IS an issue, is the portabilities of high bandwidth consumption devices, I guess. Also, Bluetooth can serve no more than 1 device at a time, but wireless sounds to me that it can serve up to normal wireless devices, such as 127 nodes. If that is the case, I will put a wireless USB on my midtower, then I can move my monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, web cam and other devices next room or upstairs. Don’t get me wrong, I like Bluetooth too because it’s so convenient and it does not consume much power. But then the bandwidth is just not enough and I need something more than Ad-Hoc mode.
Just my too cents
I would love this this just to take care of the mass of wires that seems to sprout from the back of every computer I deal with. From my audio recording setup, usb game contorllers, monitor cable, pda docking station, printer, transmitter for my wireless keyboard and mouse … on and on.
Given that wireless usb can be sensibly secured I can see this dramatically easing the mess behind my computer. Another phenominal use would be a wusb KVM switch. The cable routing needed for a cluster with a KVM switch to each node is a huge mess.
In short, I think this would give great flexibility in the placement of all the devices that are typically tethered to your computer (and that your computer is tethered to) clean up the huge mass of wires that sprout from them.
The adoption depends entirely on companies, and at the level of small devices with embedded OSes, driver transparency and freedom are huge issues. Linux has significant market share there, and so do many unusual proprietary OSes. You have to make it easy for all of them.
Its silly to think that initial Linux support will make or break Wireless USB. I feel wireless USB will take off on its own ease of use via windows. Hopefully it will be secure..
480Mbps is completely inadequate for a monitor.
Does anybody know how much bandwidth a normal monitor has? Thanks.
i think that may depend on it being digital like a lcd or analog like a crt as lcds only have to update the buits that change while the crt have to keep updateing the whole screen…
A 1280×1024 monitor is 1.3107E6 pixels. Assuming 32 bitplanes (granting that some people might not consider that adequate) takes us to 41.94e6 bits; now the question is the refresh rate, which for a typical monitor will take you somewhere between 3-4 Gb/sec.
480 Mbps would be adequate for an X terminal, or just about any remote display protocol I can imagine, though. Driving a raw display over a radio link is just nuts.
Are you saying that the monitor cable transfer data at 3-4 gb/s?????????????!!!!!!! what the hell not other data transfer devices uses this?