Wireless USB

In May 2005 the Wireless USB Promoters Group announced the completion of the Wireless USB standard and in July 2007 the first wireless USB products were certified. In this post I am going to look at the Wireless USB protocol and discuss the some of Wireless USB products that are currently available.

First of all, I should mention that this post refers to "Certified Wireless USB" from the USB-IF, not WirelessUSB from Cypress Semiconductor which is a different technology.

Certified Wireless USB is a low power, high speed wireless technology designed to meet the interconnection requirements of PC peripherals, mobile devices and multimedia consumer electronics. It's based on UWB (WiMedia Alliance's Ultra-WideBand) radio platform and can operate at 480Mbps over 3 meters and 110Mbps over 10 meters. The intended frequency range is 3.1 to 10.6 GHz although this may be restricted in some countries.

Certified Wireless USB is designed to preserve the functionality of wired USB. This means that Wireless USB support can instantly be added to a device by plugging an adaptor into an existing USB port. A Wireless USB connection will be able to support up to 127 devices.

Among the first products to be certified for Wireless USB were Lenovo's ThinkPad T61/T61p notebooks, Dells Inspiron 1720 notebook and Wireless USB hubs from D-Link and Iogear.

We are most likely to see Wireless USB technology being used in multimedia applications. Devices such as mobile phones, PDA's and MP3 players are already starting to use wireless connections but they don't have the high speed and low power consumtion that Wireless USB can offer.

Certified Wireless USB from the USB-IF