UWB goes legit

The European Commission has given the official thumbs-up to Ultrawideband (UWB), the high bandwidth, short distance tech the EC believes will find its way onto all sorts of hardware in the coming years.

The Commission announced the decision to harmonise the market around UWB by launching mandatory conditions under which the tech can be used throughout the EU for the first time.

It predicts the advent of UWB will do away with cabling between devices, such as a USB memory stick and a computer or a digital camera and a printer, and end up facilitating communications, measurement, location, medical, surveillance and imaging applications.

The spectrum band licensed for UWB is already being used by the mobile, aviation and broadcasting industries but the EC says the low transmission power of UWB will help prevent interference.

It's thought UWB-connected devices will start to emerge this year. Analyst house ABI Research predicts the next five years will see significant growth in the number of PCs that ship with embedded UWB capacity.