ISSCC: Wireless favored by
home-net panel
By Stephan Ohr
EE Times
(02/09/00, 2:07 p.m. EST)
SAN FRANCISCO — Participants in a panel session at this year's
International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) seemed to feel
that wireless technologies — particularly variations on the IEEE 802.11
standard — offer the best possibilities for convenience in
home-networking applications. Wireless solutions would not only
overcome users' objections to stringing cables and connectors, but
also offer business users the ability to integrate their office laptops
conveniently into a home network.
Five of the seven panelists seemed to gravitate toward this position
— despite audience concerns for the seemingly high costs of wireless
nodes, and the current bandwidth limitations of Bluetooth and HomeRF
wireless solutions.
A show-of-hands survey suggested that approximately 30 members of
the 350-person audience were currently home network users, but only
three of those were using some form of wireless technology. Home
networking is so much in its infancy, one of the panelists suggested,
that these 30 people were not just "early adopters," but part of a
technology lunatic fringe. Many of these "lunatics" admitted that they
strung Category 5 wiring for twisted-pair Ethernet in their homes.
Panelists taking the minority point of view — that wired technology
would dominate in home nets — included Jack Holloway, a founder of
the Epigram Division of Broadcom Corp. (Sunnyvale, Calif.), and
Alberto Mantovani, strategic program director with the Personal
Computing Division of Conexant Systems Inc. (Newport Beach, Calif.).
"The dirty secret is that consumers won't buy home networks,"
Holloway said. "But consumers will buy products with networks built in.
They shouldn't care whether it's wired or wireless."
If the goal is to distribute broadband Internet access through the
home, wired distribution systems — like HomePNA's 10-Mbits/second
version 2.0 of the home phone line specification — offer the best
possibilities for high data rates, Holloway said. Wireless transmission
schemes, moreover, would be much more subject to interference, he
said.
Conexant's Mantovani showed forecast figures that seemed to
suggest that power-line network users in the United States would
outnumber phone line network users ten-to-one. If home network
usage is viewed on the same evolutionary scale as life forms on Earth,
Mantovani said we are currently in some "Cenozoic" era analogous to
2 million to 5 million years ago. "The 'big bang' hasn't even happened
yet," he said. But the evolution of the network "life forms" will show
many different topologies, including combinations of both wired and
wireless access systems, he said.
Wireless tilt
But Prism scientist Brent Myers of Intersil (Palm Bay, Fla.), wireless
systems researcher Ran-Hong Yan of Lucent Technologies Bell Labs
(Swindon, England) and analog expert Sven Mattison of Ericsson
Mobile Communications (Lund, Sweden) helped tilt the panel heavily
toward wireless. "Wireless allows mobility," said Mattison. "The user
can bring his laptop to the sofa."
Intersil's Myers claimed that 802.11 would support multimedia
transmissions and broadband home distribution with 11-Mbits/s data
rates. (And new modulation schemes could boost wireless data rates
to 100 Mbits/s, he said.) Semiconductor volumes would soon bring the
cost of an 11-Mbits/s 802.11 transceiver into the $100 range, he
said.
Lucent's Yan was even more aggressive, suggesting that the cost per
node of a wireless LAN will drop below $50, and perhaps as low as $5,
within the next few years. Currently, there are 62 million U.S.
households with PCs, said Yan. Some 20 million have more than one
PC, but only 5 percent of those are using networks in their home. In
2003, there will be 70 million PC households, 26 million of them with
multiple PCs, and 30 percent of those will be networked, he said.
During this time, the cost of a wireless node — spurred by advances
in RF ICs — will have dropped from $250 to less than $100. There will
be 100 million wireless transceivers shipped when the price drops
below that level, Yan said.
"For some reason, cordless phones outsell wired films," said Modest
Oprysko, communication technology manager at IBM (Yorktown
Heights, N.Y.). "802.11 solutions are taking off in the corporate world,
and there is a huge installed base of Ethernet LANs. By the time
802.11 users want to put them in their home networks, they'll be
cheap," he said.
Wireline quality
For wireless to prevail, it must offer the same quality as wireline
networks, said panelist Neil Weste, vice president of engineering at
Radiata (North Ryde, Australia). He suggested that advanced
communications algorithms like spread spectrum technology and CMOS
integration would build a "wireless 1394" for multimedia use in the
home.
What then does it take to provide a $15 wireless node, with a 100-dB
power amp and a -90-dB receive sensitivity?, asked a provocateur in
the audience. "Figure it out," replied Lucent's Yan. "It takes an
integrated radio front end. It's probably 50 mm2 in CMOS, 20-to-50
gates," he said. "You tell me: what does that cost?" |
