News Briefs

A group of companies is developing a wireless version of the popular high-speed, host-to-device, universal serial bus (USB) interconnect standard. This would add wireless technology's mobility and convenience to an interconnect approach widely used with, for example, PC peripherals, handheld devices, and consumer electronics. Electronics formed the Wireless USB Promoter Group. The group has already begun defining a specification with a bandwidth of 480 Mbits per second, the same speed as wired USB 2 and much faster than USB 1's 2 Mbits per second. Wireless USB can transmit data over 3 meters at peak speeds and up to 10 meters at lower speeds. Wired USB's range is the length of a cable, which is typically up to 1.5 meters. Wireless USB is also energy effi-cient—which would help conserve mobile devices' battery life. The technology provides a cable-free environment for many portable devices , such as MP3 music players and video recorders, which now must connect via a cable to transfer data to another machine, said Dave Thompson, wireless-vendor Agere's technical manager for technology, strategy, and standards and the com-pany's Wireless USB Promoter Group representative. Portable devices no longer must be within a cable's length of another machine to communicate with it, thereby making connectivity considerably more flexible. This would permit, for example, elements of a home theater system to be farther apart, making implementation more convenient. Except for utilizing mobile technologies , wireless USB uses basically the same protocol, architecture, device drivers, and driver infrastructure as its wired counterpart, thereby permitting a smooth migration path. Wireless USB will be based on ultra-wideband, a low-power, short-distance, wireless technology for transmitting large amounts of data over a wide spectrum of frequency bands. Wireless USB will operate via a UWB radio that uses orthogonal frequency-division multi-plexing (OFDM) to achieve high band-width. Potentially, wireless USB transmissions could be intercepted. However, the technology will include encryption, so intercepted transmissions could not be easily viewed. According to Brad Hosler, Intel's wireless USB engineering manager, companies want to implement additional security but have not determined how to do so. One possible approach involves using a portable flash-memory card for storing passwords and other sensitive information. Removing the card would keep the sensitive information from intruders. Hostler said private-and public-key encryption schemes are too expensive for wireless USB implementations. Hosler said the Wireless USB Promoter Group should finish the specification, which eventually will be managed by the USB …