June 25, 2008
WiMAX woes
By Jack Shandle

This was a week when mobile

For starters, Frost and Sullivan released a report that raised doubts about its long-term viability Bleak prospects seen for mobile WiMAX.

And WiMAX Trends, a publication that usually sees the sunny side of WiMAX, bemoaned the fact that "A lack of WiMAX deployments in France has led that country's regulator, ARCEP, to launch an investigation to determine how close national WiMAX licensees are to meeting their rollout obligations."

Last week, my article on multimode (Endgame: Will WiMax and LTE find happiness in multimode?), also whittled away at the idea that WiMAX was somehow and irresistible force.

I've also had a few emails from readers suggesting that the power/battery life issue for both LTE and WiMAX is only going to become more widely acknowledged.

We have at least a partial answer in SiGe technology. See How to meet the design challenges of WiMAX power amplifiers.

No wonder the carriers are, perhaps, dragging their feet.
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June 17, 2008
Multimode: The other missing piece
By Jack Shandle

My article that appeared in EE Times this week prompted a response from a reader who asked me to look into another problem: The issue of which

It is more complex than one might think at first. In today's environment the choice between 2G and 3G is based on the strongest signal and uses proprietary solutions.

WiMax/LTE negotiation is a different ballgame. If both signals are available it might be likely that different operators would be involved. In that event, a protocol based on a de-facto standards at the very least would be needed.

User cost, desired battery life, and maximum data rate might also be part of the negotiation.

Look for more on this topic later. Multimode may take a long time to happen but it is coming and it will have a big impact.

The article that started it all is available at Endgame: Will WiMax and LTE find happiness in multimode?
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June 10, 2008
WiMAX makes another right turn
By Jack Shandle

News that six companies have formed a patent alliance around their

I prefer to think of it as hedging one's bets. Patents are one thing and patent pools are another. This could be a way for some large companies who have bet on WiMAX to present a united front as WiMAX and LTE start their inevitable path toward convergence.

The companies involved—Intel, Samsung, Sprint, Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, and Clearwire—seem to represent the mega-company wing of the WiMAX technology spectrum. With the exception of Clearwire, which is an Intel surrogate, they are all capitalized in the multiple billions of dollars.

Conspicuously missing are the start-ups that have accounted for much more of the innovation in WiMAX chips—Sequans, Beecem, and Wavesat come immediately to mind but there are many more.

Qualcomm is also conspicuously absent and it holds many important OFDM patents. But let's let that one rest for awhile.

The claim of a Clearwire executive that the patent pool is "all about openness and predictability of the business model," is open to interpretation. Predictable cost doesn't necessarily mean lower cost, for example, and how exactly does the new patent pool guarantee that the process is more "open?" Intel, Cisco and Samsung are not exactly renowed in the industry for a willingness to share.

And what should be make of the statement (as quoted by Reuters from a press release): "This approach will focus on providing a more competitive royalty structure by charging only for the features required to develop WiMax products."

With multimode chips and the use of selected SDR techniques very much in the realm of possibility these days, I wonder if the "patent pool" isn't part of an attempt to patent the standard, which should be a contradiction in terms—except in the hands of patent lawyers.

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June 03, 2008
Ozmo enters ultra-low power fray
By Jack Shandle

Ozmo, a

Perhaps the biggest advantage Ozmo has, however, is that its technology has already been adopted by Intel. (See the news article Wi-Fi jumps into the PAN.)

In electronics—particularly wireless—competition is always a moving target.

And for the applications Ozmo is targeting (mice, keyboards, headsets etc.) Bluetooth is something of a paper tiger.

It has never succeeded in the PC peripheral market because proprietary technologies, notably those from Nordic Semiconductor and Cypress Semiconductor, have all the power- and cost-saving features Ozmo is touting for its technology.

(See Avoiding Interference in the 2.4-GHz ISM band and When DSSS and FHSS fail: Avoiding interference on the 2.4GHz wireless desktop.)

Bluetooth is evolving as well with ultra-low-power Bluetooth about a year away and high-speed Bluetooth (based on sharing a Wi-Fi radio) coming a year after that. There are challenges to ULP Bluetooth when one tries to apply it to PC peripheral scenarios—but finding solutions to challenges and constantly innovating is what engineering is all about.

We'll find out more about these comparisons as we move into the future. Ozmo, for example, will probably detail its technology in WirelessNetDesignline over the next few months.

Ozmo's ace in the hole may be its dual-radio specification, which suggests a bit more than just PC peripheral attachments. But don't forget that the PC business isn't the sequestered market of a decade ago. Nokia, Apple and other "consumer" companies will be chiming in on Ozmo too.
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