Ultrawideband of Brothers
I just broke the latest issue of Wired Magazine out of its plastic. I've been a bit negative about Wired for some time. I started subscribing right after the second issue and have been a reader ever since. For the past few years Wired has felt a little "Tired". Still, there are always good articles if you can wade through some of the nonsense. It's weird to think that Wired has been around for 10 years.
I found the "Ultrawideband of Brothers" piece, page 040, very interesting. It felt a little like a George Gilder piece. George isn't always right, but he consistently scores high on the "interesting idea" scale. George was the first to pick CDMA over TDMA. If I'm not mistaken, CDMA is built on ultrawideband technology. Ultrawideband was orginally developed in the 1940s for military field communications.
This little company in California, Aether Wire & Location, is making inroads into the utrabroadband (UWB) area. They have developed a pager sized transceiver. It is powered by AAA batteries, passes data at up to 10 Kbps and costs between $10 and $15. Future versions will be smaller and powered by watch batteries. The cost of each transceiver is expected to decrease dramatically as manufacturing quantities increase.
The most immediate value, as stated in the article, will come on the battlefield. Troops can drop transceivers as they progress in the field. Each soldier can carry a transceiver. Think of it as electronic bread crumbs that will enable the command post to communicate with and track each individual. The network becomes organic, expanding and contracting to meet ever changing field positions.
These transceivers run on low power and would be very difficult for an enemy to trace. A soldier could be pinpointed to within half an inch of his location. UWB could produce incredible leaps forward in battle strategy and tactics.
The manufacturers are mostly interested in some niche areas. They are afraid to challenge big wireless providers and draw their wrath. For now Aether is content to stay under the radar of the big wireless players. But there are tons of other uses for this technology. Just use your imagination.
I talked about this story with Dan Patterson. He immediately shared an idea with me. It involved placing transceivers along the highway and providing connectivity to travelers. Points of interest could be cataloged and messages displayed as a traveler passed by. And that's only one possibility.
What if every car on the highway was equipped with a $10.00 transceiver? What if every employee was equipped for wireless? What if every child wore one on his/her hip or carried one in a pack? Think of what in could mean to wireless access. This technology feels very Internetish to me. Each person becomes an endpoint and no one would control wireless. Oh, to dream. It will be fun to keep track of where this technology goes in the months ahead.
That's all for now.........
9:38:16 AM 
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