Microsoft has joined the the WiMedia Alliance as a promoter member. The alliance, which is an open, non-profit industry association dedicated to collaboratively developing and administering ultrawideband (UWB) technology, now consists of many such member companies, including Intel, Kodak, Microsoft, Nokia, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony and many others. Microsoft has joined the alliance in order to become directly involved with the development of the Alliance's UWB technology.
According to Kosar Jaff, product unit manager in Microsoft's Windows Division, Microsoft anticipates a wide range of potential applications for ultrawideband. "Some of the UWB scenarios of interest include ad-hoc networking, wireless hard disk drives, and rapid synchronization with rich media drives such as digital cameras and portable media players," he says.
As yet, no industry-wide UWB standard has yet emerged, but all of this may change in the future, especially with the involvement of a company as influential in the tech world as Microsoft.
"Microsoft is always evaluating industry standards. At this juncture, the progress on WiMedia's standards, as well as the support from our customers, is leading us to engage deeply with WiMedia for development of UWB on Windows PCs." - Kosar Jaff.