Wi Media Alliance

Wi Media Alliance

The WiMedia Alliance is a non-profit open industry association that promotes and enables the rapid adoption, regulation, standardization and multi-vendor interoperability of ultra-wideband (UWB) worldwide.

WiMedia Alliance develop, maintain, enhance and reference technical specifications including:

• PHY and MAC
• Convergence architecture to provide coexistence and fairness including support for multiple applications (e.g., Wireless USB, Wireless 1394 FireWire, Bluetooth, IP, etc.)
• A protocol adaptation layer for the Internet Protocol
• IP-based application profiles

WiMedia Alliance and MultiBand OFDM Alliance Special Interest Group (MBOA-SIG) merged into a single organization in 2005. The merged group operate as the WiMedia Alliance.

On March 16, 2009, the WiMedia Alliance announced it was entering into technology transfer agreements for the WiMedia Ultra-wideband (UWB) specifications. WiMedia has transferred all current and future specifications, including work on future high speed and power optimized implementations, to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), Wireless USB Promoter Group and the USB Implementers Forum. After the successful completion of the technology transfer, marketing and related administrative items, the WiMedia Alliance will cease operations.

WiMedia UWB is the basis for the industry’s first UWB standards. The WiMedia Ultra-Wideband (UWB) Common Radio Platform incorporates media access control (MAC) layer and physical (PHY) layer specifications based on Multi-band Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MB-OFDM). The solution enables shortrange multimedia file transfers at data rates of 480 Mbit/s and beyond with low power consumption, and operates in the 3.1 to 10.6 GHz UWB spectrum. WiMedia UWB is optimized for the personal computer (PC), consumer electronics (CE), mobile device and automotive market segments.

The UWB system provides a wireless PAN with data payload communication capabilities of 53.3, 55, 80, 106.67, 110, 160, 200, 320, 480, 640, 800, 960, and 1024 Mbit/s.

The WiMedia UWB platform is also optimized for complementary wireless personal area network (WPAN) technologies such as Bluetooth 3.0, Certified Wireless USB, the 1394 Trade Group’s “Wireless FireWire” Protocol Adaptation Layer (PAL) (Non-IP Peer to Peer architecture) and Wireless TCP/IP - Digital Living Network Alliance. Different wireless protocols can operate within the same wireless personal area network without interference. In addition to these, many other industry protocols can reside on top of the WiMedia UWB platform. Those include Ethernet, DVI and HDMI. Presently, the WiMedia PHY specification has an over-the-air uncoded capability of more than 1024 Mbit/s; the specification is highly scalable and will ultimately support wireless DVI and HDMI, operating at multiple Gbit/s data rates.

The WiMedia Network (formerly WiNET) is a protocol adaptation layer (PAL) that builds on the WiMedia UWB common radio platform to augment the convergence platform with TCP/IP services.

Certified Wireless USB can operate in two ways:

• Coexistence Wireless USB operates on top of Wimedia UWB PHY - Wimedia UWB MAC - Convergence Layer.
• Pure Wireless USB operates directly on top of Wimedia UWB PHY.

Bluetooth, Wireless 1394, IP (WiMedia Network) operate on top of Wimedia UWB PHY - Wimedia UWB MAC - Convergence Layer like Coexistence Wireless USB.

Within the WiMedia MAC specification is the MAC Convergence Architecture (WiMCA) that allows applications to share UWB resources. WiMCA defines a number of policies, including channel-time utilization; secure association, authentication and data transfer; device and WPAN management; quality of service; discovery of services; and power management.

WiMedia plans to develop universal IP addressing protocols in alignment with organizations such as the UPnP Forum and Digital Living Network Alliance.

Current Board Members of the Alliance include: Alereon, CSR, Olympus, Samsung and Wisair.