Intel Corp. announced the completion of key technical specifications of the ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless technology and the merger of the WiMedia Alliance and Multi-band OFDM Alliance (MBOA) industry groups to drive the standardization and adoption of UWB.

UWB is a wireless technology designed to transmit data within short range (up to 10 meters) at very high bandwidths (up to 480Mbps) while using little power. One of the main advantages of UWB is it does not interfere with other wireless technologies already in use, such as Wi-Fi, WiMAX and cellular wide-area communications.

Wireless USB will be one of the technology implementations that will use UWB as the radio technology. The goal of Wireless USB is to deliver the same ease of use and high speeds associated with USB 2.0, but without wires. The first version of Wireless USB specification will be completed by the end of this month and the MBOA medium access controller (MAC) is scheduled to be completed by midyear.

The MBOA’s MAC layer specification v1.0 is expected to be finalized by the end of June, after the group's merger with the WiMedia Alliance. The WiMedia Alliance and the MBOA are industry groups that share a large portion of their memberships and have similar missions. Combining these groups will bring efficiency in developing the UWB standards and interoperabilty. After the groups merge they will maintain the current momentum to create a certification and interoperability testing program capable of addressing the entire UWB technology stack.

Intel believes the broadly supported MBOA, WiMedia Alliance and Wireless USB Promoter Group will enable commercial development of UWB standards-based products in late 2005 to early 2006. Through cooperative work with other industry players in the consumer electronics, computing and communications segments, as well as these industry groups, Intel is helping to create an ecosystem for UWB-enabled devices.

Wireless USB will support up to 480Mb/s transfer speed over 3-4 meters and up to 110Mb/s over 10 meters. The technology will sport certain security capabilities so not to let intruders to take over various devices and/or steal sensitive data. Additionally, wireless USB will inherit “sleep”, “listen” and “wake” functions of conventional Universal Serial Bus in order to enable power-saving features.