3. Key Players in UWB

The consumer electronics industry has specifically eyed UWB to potentially provide wireless connectivity between a computer and display, a computer and digital camera ,a television and DVD player, a projector and computer, and numerous other possibilities. Thus , a diverse group of companies have rallied behind the technology.Interest in UWB has sparked the creation of two industry-led interest groups , the WiMedia group and the UWB Forum.
Founded in June 2003 as the MBOA, the WiMedia group has some of the most influential names in consumer electronics. Intel, Sony, Nokia, Sharp, NXP semiconductors, Microsoft, Philips and nearly 150 other companies and organizations hold what is now WiMedia Alliance membership. http://www.wimedia.org

Locked in a decisive battle with the WiMedia Alliance is the UWB Forum, a group founded by Motorolla in late 2004. The group has just over 100 member companies, though unlike the WiMedia Alliance, its members do not include as many prominent consumer electronics companies. Of course, some companies including Motorola has left the group already. www.uwbforum.org

The above both parties use similar frequency bands. But where the two plans differ is in the type of modulation:

• WiMedia Alliance uses frequency hopping (Frequency Hopping Code Division Multiple Access, FH-CDMA) and multiple bands at once. The group's technique splits the UWB- allowable frequency range in to 14 subdivisions, then sends data as "pulses" in a subdivision, switching to other subdivisions as necessary in order to minimize interference and abide by frequency regulations in a particular area. The WiMedia proposal has been touted as the most feasible for international deployment,due to its ability to easily block out spectra that already may be in use in a particular country
• The UWB forum uses DS-CDMS ( Direct-sequence Code Division Multiple Access) so that every one shares the whole space using encryption to keep each signal segregated from its neighbors. That is, each user terminal is assigned a unique spreading signature that makes each user's communication approximately orthogonal to those of others.

A good explanation of the technology being used by each of the above two groups is given in section 2 (UWB technology and application section)