Today saw the public unveiling of the UWB Alliance, a global not-for-profit organization that will collectively establish Ultra Wideband (UWB) technology as an innovative and unique technology which is now ready to explode by evolving to a mature high-volume, open-standards industry. At its creation, the Alliance counts key players from across major industry sectors and includes founding members such as Hyundai, Kia, Zebra, Decawave, Alteros, Novelda, and Ubisense.
“We are at a significant inflection point in the adoption of UWB. In recent years we have seen dramatic growth in implementations of UWB across a range of industries and geographies. However, that expansion is accelerating as we see the introduction of the next generation of UWB devices based on the draft IEEE 802.15.4z standard,” said Tim Harrington, Chairman of the UWB alliance. “That means there is an increasing need for a unified face for the technology as well as increased efforts to ensure interoperability between devices. The Alliance will provide those and serve as a forum for collaboration across the industry.”
The UWB Alliance has been created with four key goals:
- To promote large-scale deployments of UWB technology and protect the millions of installed devices globally from encroaching radio technologies.
- To drive continued geographic expansion of UWB technology into new regions such as the recently announced UWB regulations in India.
- To support growth of UWB technologies through end-to-end, vendor-agnostic interoperability programs.
- To provide a forum for collaboration across the UWB ecosystem.
The UWB Alliance has also tasked Tim Harrington, as Chairman and Executive Director, to lead the fast-paced growth of the group and drive the specification work. Harrington has spent over 30 years working in the wireless industry, working with companies such as Symbol, WhereNet, and Zebra to define and create markets for Wi-Fi and UWB. Harrington also currently serves as Chairman of the IEEE Task Group 802.15.4z and Vice Chairman of ETSI TGUWB in the European Union.
The voice of the UWB industry in Washington DC and Brussels, the Alliance is working with government law makers and regulators to make progress on one of its key goals: ensuring effective interoperation and co-existence with other wireless standards. The IEEE 802 LAN/MAN Standards Committee that oversees Local and Metropolitan Area networking standards including standards used by UWB and Wi-Fi has drafted and approved comments to the FCC 6 GHz NPRM expressing its recognition of the need for coexistence between UWB and Wi-Fi as the latter technology seeks to expand into the 6 GHz band. The committee has also requested the 802.19 coexistence Working Group work toward an effective resolution on the issue.
Leave a Reply