Yes, Wireless USB could be the most popular technology in the future!
The data rate of Zigbee is up to 250Kbps and it is usually used in Home and Commerce, such as heat supplying, air conditioning and lighting control.
The data rate of Bluetooth is up to12Mbps and it is mainly used for audio transfer or control of PC peripherals, Earphones, Cell Phones and PDAs at a low data rate.
Wireless USB can reach the speed of up to 480 Mbps with distances up to 3 meters, and up to 110 Mbps over ten meters. It is suitable for the applications of video and data transmission at high speed. I think it will be first used in portable devices such as Cell Phone, PDA, DSC, DVR and other Storage Devices.
So, Wireless USB will not threat Zigbee, but Bluetooth is likely to be replaced gradually by Wireless USB in coming days.
I'm not so sure. We already have cell phones, PDAs etc with WiFi, so I can't see why they would also need to have wireless USB for media transfer, unless there is a significant cost/power reduction. This is unlikely to happen with a mature technology like WiFi. I know the physical presence to a transmitter could be a problem, but in my opinion most transfers happen in the home/office/public places where WiFi is present.
Even this problem could be helped with WiMAX, or any other type of MAN, relegating WUSB to point to point transfer. It should be interesting to watch and see how things turn out
WUSB and WiFi respectively concentrate on different applications.
WUSB can work at 480Mbps which is greatly faster than WiFi. For the point to point transfer, I think WUSB will be prevalent in the future as long as there is a resonable cost/power ratio. For example, the transfer of big files such as multimedia between cell phone and computer will be the most common application of WUSB in the beginning; it can be the wireless connetion standard that take the place of the current USB wires.
WiFi is mainly used for networking communications, such as surfing on Internet throgh LAN using Wifi as the communication protocol.
WiFi stress on network exploring, while WUSB stress on data transfer.
Thanks for your reply, it does seem a fascinating subject. I was thinking of applications such as streaming video, for example from a PC to a TV, or a DVD player to a TV. For BlueRay the data rate is around 54Mbit/s, which should be handled by 802.11n/s. On your point about mobile phone transfer, many new phones already incorporate WiFi, and I can't see a lot of benefift in incorporating new technology into phones which already have the technology in place to do that job, albeit a little slower. That's unless you were downloading the full contents of your 15GB iPhone. But in general, I don't think many users would see too much of a difference for the extra expenditure.
However, I can see WUSB being used in office environments, especially new developments, for connecting to printers/scanners.But then the range may be an issue depending on the size of office.
WUSB has a lower hit on the batteries than Bluetooth, but it's not really hit the market yet. There are wireless devices such as keyboards, but it's really only scratching the surface. Zigbee is struggling to be adopted in my opinion, but it's a matter of the hardware appearing in laptops and being available. As for data transfer and access, wifi seems to have become established for this for phones and PDA's.
I see it down the bottom end of the market, but only when it's adopted in the host hardware first.
I'm not so sure. We already have cell phones, PDAs etc with WiFi, so I can't see why they would also need to have wireless USB for media transfer, unless there is a significant cost/power reduction. This is unlikely to happen with a mature technology like WiFi. I know the physical presence to a transmitter could be a problem, but in my opinion most transfers happen in the home/office/public places where WiFi is present.
Even this problem could be helped with WiMAX, or any other type of MAN, relegating WUSB to point to point transfer. It should be interesting to watch and see how things turn out
all you wrote is true, yet on the PC, you have both Ethernet and USB.
Networks are built and designed for specific purposes:
WUSB is aimed for WPAN.
Wi-Fi is aimed for WLAN.
WiMax is aimed for WWAN and contends with the cellular networks.
These services should not compete, they are complimentary.
Why should the throughput of all the users on your WLAN suffer a significant reduction just because you wish to activate some additional local short range application ?
awinning wrote:
I was thinking of applications such as streaming video, for example from a PC to a TV, or a DVD player to a TV. For BlueRay the data rate is around 54Mbit/s, which should be handled by 802.11n/s.
The data rates you wrote for video is the maximal compressed rate. However, the current architecture of the TVs and DVDs (and other similar products such as cables\sat receivers) placed the decompression at the DVD player (or any other element) and not at the TV. Thus, the data rates required for HD video are much higher, the current common solution is to perform some minor compression and then send it to the TV at rates way over 100Mbps. WUSB can handle such rates, depending on the distance.
The 802.11n should also handle such rates, but, the impact on the LAN throughput will be major not minor. If you (or anyone else at your home using the WLAN) try and do any additional activity on your LAN, you might find it irresponsive, or your video might suffer.
Hence, the concept of using both WUSB and Wi-Fi, each for a different purpose.
Amir
Note - I work for WISAIR, and we develop WUSB and UWB
