The lure of ultrawideband
May 16, 2000
by Rex Crum
When Ralph Petroff speaks, he at first sounds like any one of a thousand high-technology entrepreneurs, convinced that his company has found the answer to all of the questions of the Internet age.
"This technology can enable new industries," says Petroff, president and chief executive officer of Time Domain Corp., a Huntsville, Ala.-based microchip firm. "The most amazing products using this haven't even been invented yet. The only limits are your imagination."
What gets Petroff sounding almost evangelical is ultrawideband technology, a radical, new wireless method of data transmission. While virtually unheard of by the average person, ultrawideband is considered by those who know about it to be the answer to just about every communications technology issue today.
Last week ultrawideband took a broad leap toward public use when the Federal Communications Commission, in effect, put its stamp of approval on the technology. The FCC unanimously approved the use of ultrawideband following a final series of tests and input from the wireless industry. Final approval, expected in early 2001, awaits another round of public comment.
The FCC approved ultrawideband based on several issues, saying the technology "could permit scarce spectrum resources to be used more efficiently" and that its use showed "enormous benefits for public safety, consumers and businesses."
Not a household word
If you've never heard of ultrawideband, join the crowd. Not even officials at some of the nation's largest wireless phone companies are very familiar with ultrawideband.
"We're not using it right now," said Robert Hoskins, media relations director for Sprint PCS Group's (PCS) wireless broadband division. "There's nothing as far as what we're working on."
What is unique about ultrawideband is that the technology has the potential to alleviate several wireless industry problems at the same time, not the least of which is the crowding of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Ultrawideband signals are transmitted like heartbeats: timed pulses sent out at very low power across a wide area. The effect is that the signal power of, for example, a cell phone call is so distinct that a person can get a call without all the background static and noise that often comes with wireless calls.
Current wireless signals are sent along very narrow, constant wave bands and often receive pressure and interference from other signals.
Many possible applications
The technology is being touted as useful in not only wireless phones and hand-held computers, but even in laptop computers, televisions and home-security devices.
That's where Petroff and Time Domain come in. Petroff's company makes a chip that uses ultrawideband technology and he says it is capable of being used in just about any industry.
Time Domain got a bit of a head start in the ultrawideband market. In 1999, the FCC gave Time Domain a waiver to sell a small number of products using ultrawideband technology to law enforcement, firefighters and rescue personnel in the United States.
What the company ended up selling was something called RadarVision, a motion detector that can "look" through walls and detect the locations of people within buildings. The motion detector has also been tested in finding earthquake victims buried beneath building rubble.
Petroff compared the state of this technology's development to how in 1991 only a few diehard techno-geeks were caught up something called the Internet.
"The killer application of this is that potentially dozens of new industries can be enabled," Petroff said. "There's radar, global positioning, wireless. It works indoors. You can use this to effectively create new spectrum space."
New cell phones first
However, should the FCC grant its final approval of ultrawideband, consumers would probably first notice the technology in new cell phones.
Both wireless companies and the FCC have been clamoring for an answer to scarce spectrum space. Industry estimates say there are 90 million wireless phones in the United States, and a new one comes online every two seconds, making for some crowded airwaves.
And with the latest promise of wireless Internet, data and broadband services, the electromagnetic spectrum is getting filled with much more than calls to mom on Mother?s Day.
Shrinking spectrum space
Ken Woo, director of corporate communications at AT&T Wireless Group (AWE), said the shrinking spectrum space is the single biggest issue facing wireless companies. Woo added that with Europe and Asia also adopting wireless standards and pushing technologies of their own, the United States could fall behind its counterparts if more room in the spectrum isn't found.
"If this ultrawideband turns out to be all it's cracked up to be, it's definitely going to be welcomed in the industry," Woo said.
Rex Crum is a reporter at UpsideToday covering telecom, broadband and wireless.
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