IBM has produced chips based on the evolving 802.15.3c specification, which will be capable of passing high-definition files and other content at distances of around 5-10m.
Current samples of the chip run at more than 600Mbps, said Brian Gaucher, research staff member at IBM. The goal is to get these chips up to 1.4-1.5Gbps per second.
"We're looking at this for consumer applications, like high-definition video transfer," he said. "You can get conference room coverage. We are not really looking at wall penetration."
A wireless chip that can transfer files rapidly over short distances has long been a goal of the tech industry but universal acceptance has proved elusive. Bluetooth spent years in standards committee, and although currently embedded in products, it has hardly become a universally used standard. Bluetooth also did not become a wireless standard for getting to the Internet, something backers originally envisioned. Similarly, Ultrawideband (UWB), got stuck in standards stalemate for a while.
The chips from IBM rely on the portion of the radio spectrum from roughly 30 to 300 GHz, which is known as the millimetre wave frequency bands because the wavelength of radio waves in this section of the spectrum is best measured in millimetres. The IEEE 802.15.3c committee is concentrating on the band between 57-64GHz, known as 60GHz, which is licence-free in the US and Japan.
UK communications regulator Ofcom did not return calls seeking clarification on the situation in Europe.
"If you can do it in silicon, you can start to think about consumer applications," Gaucher said. IBM's chips based on this standard are faster than UWB chips, he said. UWB lets people handle larger data transfers at 110Mbps between devices less than 10m from one other or 480Mbps speeds at about 3m. The IBM chips are also not affected by line-of-sight issues.
IBM has sent samples to customers who are tinkering with ways to put chips like this into products. Customers can buy chips from IBM, or license the intellectual property behind the design to build their own chips.
Along with the chip, IBM has created a package with an integrated antenna. This cuts down costs and power consumption
60GHz is a very new band for the consumer electronics industry, using frequencies that until now have been reserved for specialist military and scientific work. The physics of radio transmissions is quite different from existing UHF systems such as 802.11, and much of the standards work involves investigating and defining ways for such high frequencies to work reliably in homes and offices.
Because of the tiny wavelength of 5mm, very complex antennas can be produced in very small areas. This makes 60GHz ideal for MIMO — multiple in, multiple out — systems, where arrays of antennas boost the effective power and receive capabilities by hundreds of times. As 60GHz fades ten times faster in the air than 5GHz due to much higher atmospheric absorption rates, MIMO and associated techniques aren't simply useful, they're essential.
Meanwhile, the high bandwidth available — 7GHz in the USA and Japan, with Europe to be decided — is many times more than the total allocation to all data services in the lower bands. Systems are already achieving 1Gbps at these frequencies and ten times that should be achievable, although the 802.15.3c committee is looking at a maximum of around 3Gbps.
Other developments have transformed 60GHz from an exotic band on the edge of usability to a front-ranked player for the next generation of wireless networks. A number of researchers and companies have shown that standard 130nm and 90nm CMOS chip technology can be used to fabricate working 60GHz systems, whereas this sort of frequency used to be the province of expensive technologies such as gallium arsenide.
The 802.15.3c committee hopes to have the standard finished by September 2007.
Michael Kanellos reported from San Francisco for CNET News.com.
