Intel Looks at the Future of Ultrawideband
ZDNet UK's Rupert Goodwins today interviews Dr. Kevin Kahn, Director of Intel's Communications Technology Lab, regarding the future of ultrawideband (UWB) and related technologies.
Kahn says the current state of UWB spectrum regulation is better than he might have feared. "The problem with UWB is that you make an enemy of everybody," he says. "Everyone who has a investment in an existing system can feel threatened and that they'll have to share their spectrum with a competitor who'll interfere. But a lot of the objections can be dealt with scientifically."
Operators' fears that UWB will cause interference with established networks, Kahn says, are simply naive. "You can always construct a worst-case scenario where there's a problem, even with current licensing, and it's really no different with new technologies," he says. "What's occurred because of the discussion process is a common agreement on what interference is and how to avoid it."
Looking at future developments, Kahn says 60GHz is the next logical step. "There's more bandwidth at 60GHz than UWB has, and you can do some very interesting things with antennas to compensate for the way the frequencies are absorbed," he says. "As for when, these things have a natural lifecycle where everyone gets excited, then there's a period while the problems are worked out, a cycle of five, six or seven years."