Ultrawideband technology holds promise for cable TV

Wireless communication’s hottest new development is still a year away from putting a commercial product on the market, but it has already been adapted for a wired application to double cable-TV capacity.

By Jon Van
Chicago Tribune

This development for ultrawideband radio — or UWB — as well as its reputed ability to transmit through walls and move tons of data in microseconds could make it the most versatile new technology to come along since the personal computer.

Developed decades ago by military researchers intent upon improving radar images, UWB was given a green light for commercial development in February by the Federal Communications Commission.

UWB’s first application is likely to be equipment linking personal entertainment systems, computers and other household gadgets wirelessly so that, for example, a digital camera could transmit images to a personal computer without a wired connection.

Another application: A single box connected to a cable-television system from the outside could supply signals to all the TVs or personal computers within a home without wires.

While it uses a radically different type of signal, UWB isn’t really so different from other technologies already in use, said Martin Rofheart, chief executive officer of Xtreme Spectrum, a start-up based in Vienna, Va. UWB is "Bluetooth on steroids," he said.

Bluetooth refers to a class of low-powered radio devices that provide wireless communication for electronics equipment. An example would be a wireless connection between a personal computer and a printer.

The difference, Rofheart said, is that UWB uses far less power than Bluetooth devices and sends vastly more data. Rofheart is pushing for standards to cover UWB so that it will be embraced quickly by the industry as the best means of sending data wirelessly over short distances.

Aiming at cable TV

Products to provide UWB services are expected to be ready for Christmas 2003, but an even more intriguing application has been suggested by executives at Pulse-Link, a San Diego startup.

By applying UWB wireless technology to cable-TV operating systems, it is possible to double capacity, said Bruce Watkins, Pulse-Link’s president. Thus a system that offers customers 100 channels could increase options to 200 channels.

Operators could also expand offerings of video-on-demand services, provide some high-definition programming or otherwise increase the array of available products, he said.

"You can think of a cable-TV operation as a bucket that you put water into and, however big your bucket, that’s your capacity," said Watkins. "What we can do is to give the cable operator a second bucket that holds just as much water as the first one."

While UWB is fundamentally a wireless technology that uses radio signals to work its magic, it can also be applied to a cable-TV system’s fiber and coaxial cable with salutary results, Watkins said.

UWB uses radio in a radically different way from television, cellphones, public-safety dispatchers or other traditional applications.

Existing radio transmissions split the radio waves into frequencies set apart by the power of their signals, or amplitude. UWB transmitters emit radio signals in tiny pulses across a broad range of the radio spectrum, but at very low power. Binary information is carried by varying the time between the pulses, which are sent at the rate of 10 million to 40 million per second.

To a conventional radio receiver, UWB’s timed signals look like background noise or static signals emitted by personal computers and other electronic devices. But UWB receivers can get large amounts of data quickly by reusing the same radio spectrum that’s already carrying conventional wave-based signals.

The technology was devised for use over the air, but John Santhoff, founder and chief technology officer at Pulse-Link, got the idea for using UWB over fiber and coaxial cable last year.

He found it works well, carrying new time-based signals over the same lines that are already carrying traditional analog or digital signals.

"All traditional communications are in the frequency domain," said Santhoff. "We’re in the time domain. Most existing equipment cannot even detect our signal."

A cable-TV operator can double the system’s capacity without making major changes, Watkins said. One device that may cost about $30,000 would be installed at the system’s front end, and then another device would be installed in the home of each subscriber who wanted to pay for new services. These would probably cost around $100 apiece, he said.

Pulse-Link has set up a lab demonstration of the technology for cable-industry executives. Watkins said he hopes to partner with a cable-TV operator to equip a few systems with UWB to serve as field tests. The company hopes to license the technology to companies such as Motorola that make cable-TV set-top boxes, Watkins said.

Santhoff began working on a wired application for UWB last year when the FCC put off a decision to approve over-the-air applications.

Born from contingency plan

"We were concerned about how long the FCC might delay action, so we needed a contingency plan," said Santhoff. "A wired application, outside the FCC’s jurisdiction, was something I’d thought about, but put on the back burner. When I saw how well it worked, I was sorry we didn’t do this sooner."

The company has applied for an array of patents to cover its wired UWB technology and apparently is the only company to use this approach.

"It’s an intriguing concept," said Ralph Petroff, chief executive of Time Domain, a pioneering UWB company based in Huntsville, Ala. "It shows that UWB as a concept has many different applications. We wish them well."

Petroff’s company developed some of the equipment used to generate and read UWB signals to demonstrate it to regulators and get the go-ahead from the FCC. Time Domain is working on its next-generation chipsets aimed at commercial products.

The FCC’s initial approval order put some limits on the amount of spectrum over which the signal could be spread. This will limit performance, and Petroff hopes the FCC will loosen the restrictions as experience demonstrates that UWB can coexist peacefully with conventional radio signals.

Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company

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