Wireless USB Will Build on the Success of Wired USB, Bringing USB Technology Into the Wireless

Wireless USB

The Universal Serial Bus (USB), with one billion units in the installed base, is the most successful interface in PC history. Projections are for 3.5 billion interfaces shipped by 2006. Benefiting from exceptionally strong industry support from all market segments, USB continues to evolve as new technologies and products come to market. It is already the de facto interconnect for PCs, and has proliferated into consumer electronics (CE) and mobile devices as well. USB enjoys strong brand recognition, has a well-recognized logo, and is supported by an experienced governing body the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF).

Wireless USB will build on the success of wired USB, bringing USB technology into the wireless future. Usage will be targeted at PCs and PC peripherals, consumer electronics and mobile devices. To maintain the same usage and architecture as wired USB, the Wireless USB specification is being defined as a high-speed host-to device connection. This will enable an easy migration path for today's wired USB solutions.
INTRODUCTION

The Universal Serial Bus (USB), with one billion units in the installed base, is the most successful interface in PC history. Projections are for 3.5 billion interfaces shipped by 2006. Benefiting from exceptionally strong industry support from all market segments, USB continues to evolve as new technologies and products come to market. It is already the de facto interconnect for PCs, and has proliferated into consumer electronics (CE) and mobile devices as well.

The Wireless USB is the first the high speed Personal Wireless Interconnect. Wireless USB will build on the success of wired USB, bringing USB technology into the wireless future. Usage will be targeted at PCs and PC peripherals, consumer electronics and mobile devices. To maintain the same usage and architecture as wired USB, the Wireless USB specification is being defined as a high-speed host-to-device connection. This will enable an easy migration path for today's wired USB solutions.

This paper takes a brief look at the widely used interconnect standard, USB and in particular, at the emerging technology of Wireless USB and its requirements and promises.

USB PORTS

Just about any computer that you buy today comes with one or more Universal Serial Bus connectors on the back. These USB connectors let you attach everything from mice to printers to your computer quickly and easily. The operating system supports USB as well, so the installation of the device drivers is quick and easy, too. Compared to other ways of connecting devices to your computer (including parallel ports, serial ports and special cards that you install inside the computer's case), USB devices are incredibly simple!

Wireless usb intro 2

Wireless USB is a short-range, high-bandwidthwireless radio communication protocol created by the Wireless USB Promoter Group. Wireless USB is sometimes abbreviated as "WUSB", although the USB Implementers Forum discourages this practice and instead prefers to call the technology "Certified Wireless USB" to differentiate it from competitors (see below, "Competitors"). Wireless USB is based on the WiMedia Alliance's Ultra-Wideband (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. Wireless USB is the first high-speed wireless personal interconnects technology to meet the needs of multimedia consumer electronics,PC peripherals, and mobile devices. Wireless USB will preserve the functionality of wired USB while also unwiring thecable connection and providing enhanced support forstreaming media CE devices and peripherals. Wireless USB performance is targeted at 480Mbps at 3 meters and 110Mbps at 10 meters.

The original motivation for USB came from several considerations, two of the most important being:
Ease of use

1. Introduction

The lack offlexibility in reconfiguring PC had been acknowledged as the Achilles’ heel to its further deployment. The combination of user friendly graphical interfaces and the hardware and software mechanisms associated with new-generation bus architectures have made computers less confrontational and easier to reconfigure. However from end users point of view, the PC’s I/O interfaces, such as serial parallel ports, keyboard mouse interfaces etc. Did not have the attributes of plug and play.Port expansion
The addition of external peripherals continued to be constrained by port availability. The lack of a bidirectional, low cost, low-to mid speed peripheral bus held back the creative proliferation of peripherals such as storage devices, answering machines, scanners, PDA’s, keyboards, mice etc. Existing interconnects were optimized for two point products. As each new function or capability was added to the PC, a new interface has been defined to address this need
Initially USB provided two speeds (12Mbps and 1.5Mbps) that peripherals could use. But as PC’s became increasingly powerful and able to process vast amounts of data, users need to et more and more data into and out of the PCs. USB 2.0 was defined in 2000 to provide a third transfer rate of 480Mbps while retaining backward compatibility.
Now as technology innovation marches forward, wireless technologies are more capable and cost effective. Ultra Wide Band (UWB) radio technology, in particular, has characteristics that match traditional USB usage models very well. UWB supports high bandwidth (480 Mbps) but only at limited range (~3m). Applying this wireless technology to usb frees the user from worrying about the cables; where to find them, where to plug them in, how to string them so they don’t get tripped over,
how to arrange them so they don’t look like a mess. It makes USB m ore easier to use.

Because no physical ports are required, port expansion or even finding a USB port, is
no longer a problem. Of course, losing the cable, also means losing the power for peripherals. For
self powered devices, this isn’t an issue. But for portable, bus-powered devices,
Wireless USB presents some challenges where creative minds will provide innovative
solutions that meet their customers needs. USB (wired or wireless) continues to be the answer to connectivity for the PCarchitecture. It is a fast, bi-directional, isochronous, low-cost, dynamically attachableinterface that is consistent with the requirements of the PC platform of today and
tomorrow.Wireless USB is used ingame controllers, printers, scanners, digital cameras, MP3
players, hard disks and flash drives. It is also suitable for transferring parallel video streams.

Check the below links:

<