From August 13 the UK, and then other parts of Europe will become the second territory, after the US, that allows UltraWideBand communications under strict power limits, with the addition of signal avoidance technology.
This follows a concerted campaign to introduce the technology that most think will be behind digital home video communications and which is the basis of future version of Wireless USB and Bluetooth.
UK regulator Ofcom described UWB as a generic term for technologies characterized by the emission of very low power radiation spread over a very large radio bandwidth. This means it uses bandwidth that is issued to other license holders, something that made many cellular operator complain that the rule should not be passed, but it has been proved time and time again that ambient radiation represents more of a threat than these UWB technologies which operate under the noise floor of existing radio systems, using tiny amounts of power.
In point of fact UWB technology more or less falls into two or three camps, that espoused by Pulse~link, the originator of the idea, and a slightly different system pushed by the hugely supported WiMedia Alliance, including Intel and Texas Instruments. There are other potential UWB systems on offer, for instance one from Motorola and all three of those mentioned vied, unsuccessfully for the IEEE standard on UWB over the past four years.
Ofcom did much of the work to test UWB and put its proposals to other European regulators which resulted in a European Commission mandatory decision to adopt the technology. There are similar moves being made in China and Japan so that equipment makers will near enough have a global market to aim for.
Each regulator will call for comments and may adjust wording of their regulations accordingly, but it is likely to become Europe wide in a short time. In the UK Ofcom has simply exempted UWB equipment makers from requiring a license.
Ofcom first consulted on UWB in January 2005 and found most stakeholders felt that it should work with the relevant European bodies to achieve a harmonized approach for generic UWB devices, which is how the directive has come about, with the ruling made this February, and each European country was given six months to implement the decision in their territory. It is thought that the number of UWB enabled devices could stretch into billions globally over the next ten years or so, as PCs, DVD players, DVRs, set tops, TV sets and any other device that needs to communicate a video signal, adopt the technology and drive down the component prices through volume shipments.