Wireless Connectivity in a World of Networked DTVs
November 29th, 2007by Vish Nayak, Vice President, TV and Display Electronics
Is a battle brewing for a next generation Wireless Wide Personal Area Network as the next frontier in Wireless Connectivity for Digital Flat Panel TVs?
There has been a flurry of announcements and jockeying by a number of wireless industry players in this arena. For example, there was a press release last week between IBM and MediaTek that they will collaborate and commercialize a new wireless solution for Home A/V connectivity.
This new initiative by IBM and MediaTek is a direct response to a need to solve consumers’ craving to get rid of all the mass jungle of wires that connect their A/V equipment to their TV and its attendant headache, cost and complexity of routing cables through walls, etc. and a need for a “no new wires” solution to hook up all their new A/V content sources with their new Flat Panel TV displays.
Wireless connectivity, therefore, is a key feature for consumers. It provides convenience, simplicity and mobility previously experienced by consumers with the proliferating use of cellular, Wi-Fi and BlueTooth technologies in a home environment. Wireless connectivity at home brings a newfound familiarity, promoting adoption of newer wireless technologies that will improve their lifestyles with the ability to interact A/V content like never before.
At the recent DisplaySearch Fifth Annual HD Conference held in October, John LeMoncheck, President and CEO of SiBeam (a Silicon Valley start-up), formerly with Silicon Image and the HDMI camp, spoke about their uncompressed solution for wireless video area networks (WVAN). The technology is proposed as the foundation for the Wireless-HD standard, a consortium consisting of six consumer electronics along with SiBeam. Using the 60 GHz carrier frequency, compared to sub-10 GHz for UWB and other current wireless standards, Si-Beam’s approach will offer much higher raw data rates of multiple gigabits per second in the connected network (at least 2 GBits/second) over a range of 10 meters. This solution is primarily for in-room connections and offers TV OEM manufacturers a possible lower-cost solution by eliminating the need for encoding chipsets used in compressed transmissions while at the same time delivering a higher level of picture quality because it is uncompressed, as Si-Beam claims.
Not to be left out of the race, another start-up company called AMIMON, an Israel-based start-up, is focused on offering a similar home connectivity solution for uncompressed HD video in the unlicensed 5 GHz band where a form of Wi-Fi network (802.11a) already exists. Noam Geri, Co Founder and VP of Marketing for AMIMON, explained his company’s solution at the DisplaySearch Conference, where he exhibited a wireless demonstration on the exhibit floor with transmitters and receivers hooked a Flat Panel TV displaying full 1080p based content for a wireless CE device connection using their WHDI (wireless high definition interface), and is trying to form a consortium around it to make it a next generation standard for DTV Connectivity solutions.
AMIMON’s wireless solution is also uncompressed, occupying the mature 5 GHz RF unlicensed band, which is commercially available today according to the Company. By taking this approach, AMIMON believes it can deliver a product to market quicker than competing 60 GHz based technologies which are still in the evaluation stage. Also, they believe the WHDI solution to be better because it has a greater range (greater than 10 meters) and can pass through obstructions like walls, enabling connection of devices in multiple rooms, calling other uncompressed techniques in-room cable replacement solutions.
Figure 1: Wireless Technologies Landscape
The IEEE 802.15.3c (WPAN Millimeter Wave Alternative PHY committee) has been formulating a standardization effort for WPAN’s (Wireless Personal Area Network) for 60 GHz wireless networks, where both SiBeam and IBM are involved in defining and influencing this evolving standard as a industry-wide next generation standard for wireless connections inside the home up to a range of 10 meters and with network bandwidths in excess of 3 GBits/second that will enable the wireless network to handle uncompressed multiple HD streams inside a home.
In closing, it remains to be seen if the IEEE 802.15.3c standard and the Wireless HD effort will be the same, or the SiBeam led consortium will be a proprietary standard with licensing royalties to the founding companies lead by Si-Beam as some of these companies are also members of the IEEE technical working task group. Other CE companies are looking at the AMIMON based wireless solution for their connectivity needs. Also the TV OEMs will have to decide on one common wireless connectivity standard for the home. The race has only just begun.
www.displaysearch.com