Of all the new wireless technologies to arrive on the scene in the past year or so, UWB (ultra wideband) has had the most circuitous route to becoming a standard. The International Organization for Standardization and Ecma International have finally signed off on ECMA-368, ECMA-369, and ISO/IEC 26907, which specify a distributed medium access control sublayer and a physical layer for wireless networks and forms the basis for Wireless USB.

UWB uses low-power radio that in turn uses multiband orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing to beam data between devices at up to 480Mbps. It operates in the 3.1GHz to 10.6GHz spectrum, which is good for short-distance data transmission applications for devices in the same room. Most devices will operate at 6GHz or above as that spectrum is not in wide use around the world.

WiMedia's ultra wideband technology could some day eradicate the rat's nest of cables next to and behind my desk once Wireless USB products based on WiMedia UWB come to market. Wireless USB will offer all the features and benefits of USB 2.0, but without the wires.