Was WiMedia UWB ever right for Bluetooth?

Recent murmurings have suggested that despite losing it's place as Bluetooth's high speed data channel of choice, Ultra-wideband technology (UWB) may not be dead after all.

What is puzzling is that the most strident support for UWB is coming not from the WiMedia Alliance companies, but from proponents of the alternative version of UWB technology, the companies that were once linked as the DS-UWB Forum. And, the suggestion seems to be that by going with WiMedia's solution, the Bluetooth SIG had backed the wrong horse.

Here's our point - at Incisor we don't know whether the Bluetooth SIG made the right decision, or not. We're not clever enough to be able to analyse the technical proficiency and fitness for purpose of the two erstwhile UWB combatants. Which was/is best for Bluetooth? We don't know. Fortunately, we are well connected with a lot of people that are better qualified than we are, and we are happy to provide this forum for discussion.

Kazimierz "Kai" Siwiak, the CEO of wireless consulting company TimeDerivative Inc., for example, has recently commented that the combination of WiMedia's OFDM-based UWB was never the right choice for the high speed version of Bluetooth - known as Bluetooth 3.0. His comments follow:

A while ago, the Bluetooth SIG made a tentative selection of the WiMedia variant of UWB as a candidate for a high speed option in Bluetooth. The choice is not surprising, since the key players in WiMedia and the key players in the Bluetooth SIG tend to overlap; it is thus natural that they should try to seek common ground.

However, that choice might be considered a very weak choice. The WiMedia variant of UWB is actually an OFDM system in which the 500+ MHz wide OFDM symbols can be hopped every symbol among channels that are 512 MHz apart. It is "UWB" as a consequence of occupying more than 500 MHz bandwidith by transmitting OFDM symbols comprised of about 120 sine-wave carriers spaced about 4.13 MHz apart. Efficient base band processing of this OFDM system, and in particular symbol-rate-frequency-hopping of this OFDM signal, has proven to be a very difficult problem to solve. This is especially true from the power drain point of view. In that regard, it is indeed a poor fit for Bluetooth, or for any solution which seeks to address high speed data needs in the hand-held battery powered market.

Run off from current consideration, but nonetheless much more technically and market-wise appropriate, are solutions that obtain their UWB bandwidth as a consequence of their short pulse duration. These systems tend to scale their battery power requirements in proportion to data rate, in contrast to the OFDM approach which always requires significant processing effort. The pulse-based systems can be built with power drain economies that are a good fit for high speed Bluetooth. In fact, the needed technology is already well defined and described in the IEEE 802.15.4a-2007 standard for wireless personal area networks, where low power drain is a key necessity. Perhaps that body of work might provide a viable source of technology that can be adapted to fit high speed Bluetooth needs.

These are controversial views, but are they correct? Is this just sour grapes?

Incisor invites parties from the Bluetooth community, WiMedia companies and those siding with Kai (perhaps members of what was the DS-UWB Forum), to comment here.

Sleepless in Seattle has been done. How about wireless?

The 'Can Bluetooth be cool?' campaign has been running for more than a month now. The original blog sparked off a great deal of dialogue.

Then the movie we created at the UK BiteBack event gave us unparalleled insight into the way real consumers are using Bluetooth, and their views on whether this is a cool technology, or not. Who would have thought that file-sharing was the golden application for Bluetooth, not handset to headset?

Taking the views of just one group in one geographical location is not a good idea, so I'm tremendously pleased that the Bluetooth SIG has invited us to re-stage BiteBack in Seattle. This is happening at a Halloween-themed night on Friday the 30th of October at the SEE Sound Lounge in Belltown, on Seattle's downtown waterfront. Once again, we will be taking the IncisorTV cameras to a busy music venue and talking to the people that actually buy and use the tech stuff that we spend every day trying to promote. And making a movie that will be available to view here at the www.incisor.tv site.

But it's time to move the project on. It really isn't my goal to simply learn about what people think about Bluetooth today. I want to start the process of improving awareness of Bluetooth's capabilities, and maybe even starting to make people think that wireless technology, and Bluetooth specifically at the moment, CAN be cool. So I'm talking to consumer electronics device companies such as Jabra, Sony Ericsson, Parrot, Plantronics etc, to see which of them is brave enough to get out there with me and start tackling the challenge. To sit with the people in Seattle and talk to them about why they should be doing more with Bluetooth than just sharing music tracks.

Following the first BiteBack event/movie, people at these companies are readily acknowledging that boosting Bluetooth so that everybody makes it a 'must have' feature is what they need to do. But it is like the elephant in the room - you can't ignore the fact that it is there, but do you want to try to shift it? Over the next couple of weeks, I'll find out how many visionaries there are left out there. The Bluetooth SIG has stepped up to the plate and is supporting BiteBack Seattle. Who else will be there, with Mike Foley and myself, telling the Bluetooth story to Seattle's young and beautiful?

This is going to be one interesting event! And one which any reader of this blog is more than welcome to come along to.

Can Bluetooth ever be cool?

That is a question that must be troubling technology marketeers across the world, including the makers of headsets and other Bluetooth-enabled devices, and the organisation that manages Bluetooth technology – the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG).

Bluetooth has been around since 1998, and actual Bluetooth devices started appearing a couple of years later. The very first commercially available Bluetooth product was from Ericsson, as reported in Incisor in November 1999.

From that day forth, promoters of Bluetooth have hoped that there would be a global wave of enthusiasm for the technology from consumers. But it just hasn’t happened. Despite the fact that legislation in a number of countries forces us to use Bluetooth headsets if we want to talk on a cellphone in our cars, Bluetooth daily usage is apparently going down, not up. Research company Strategy Analytics says by as much as 40% in the USA over the last year.

Here at Incisor we think that a big part of the problem is that nobody, but nobody has managed to make wearing a Bluetooth headset cool. Instead, the words ‘Bluetooth’ and ‘naff’ are heard together on far too often a basis. Only taxicab drivers and people who wear leisure suits made from synthetic materials (ok, they are often the same people) seem to think it is OK to be seen walking around wearing a Bluetooth headset.

The web is loaded with anti-Bluetooth humour, including this. Bluetooth-mocking movies are even being used as a device by companies marketing products. Check this commercial out for Keystone Light Beer. Even the vendors of Bluetooth equipment are doing it – thanks, Philips, for this one.

Some claim to be working to try to make Bluetooth cool, and have been using the old chestnut of celebrity endorsement. Courtesy of Plantronics’ marketing machine, we learn that P Diddy, Eva Longoria and Brooke Shields apparently all use Plantronics headsets. Bluetooth headsets have even made their way into music videos – Motorola product placement is at work as we watch this one for Fergie’s Big girls don’t cry. This is one of the better ones – check out that car, that girl, that track, and the headset is OK too.

But it is not working! Or else, why are all of those iPod users still walking around with their tacky white plastic headsets? Why would we want to use wired headsets when there is a huge range of wireless headsets on the market now for similar money? Heck, its a problem when even the world's coolest company can't make Bluetooth cool!

And surely this must be holding back the more widespread deployment of Bluetooth technology in other consumer electronics devices?

With some justification, the Bluetooth SIG and big-name consumer electronics (CE) companies that are supporting Bluetooth will point to the fact that billions of Bluetooth chips have been shipped, and have been built into many products that are in the hands of consumers all over the world. That is true, but it doesn’t mean that these people are using Bluetooth, or that massive chip sales means that Bluetooth has become aspirational (like, dare we say it, an iPod) or, to use the word again, cool.

So, what is the problem, and is it too late? Can Bluetooth regain the momentum it had in the early years, when people actually criticised the Bluetooth trailblazers for creating too much publicity and too much pent-up demand and hype (‘bet they’d like some of that back now!)? What would it take?

We have theories, but we want to hear from the big wide world. This blog will be promoted via all of Incisor’s channels, and that includes Twitter, Facebook and business networking sites such as LinkedIn.

And we will take it a stage further. On the 26th of September Incisor is staging a public event called Bite-Back (Bluetooth/Incisor – Bite-Back – geddit?) at a venue in the UK where there will be live music and – the main point – lots of young people. We will have the IncisorTV cameras there, a bunch of Bluetooth products and we will interview people and ask them for their views – it could be a bit painful for the Bluetooth faithful, but who knows, something really good could come.

We will make a short movie from the event and this will be promoted in the next issue of Incisor, as will a follow-up feature that will report some of the views that we hear.

It should be exciting. And maybe we will even learn what it will take to make Bluetooth cool.

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Why does Bluetooth still not work the way it should?

Anybody who knows me knows that I have been a supporter and promoter of Bluetooth technology since it first started to poke its head above the parapet, way back in 1998. But there is an elephant in my room, and its tusks are blue! Despite all the good work that the Bluetooth SIG and all its responsible member companies have done, it is still the case that Bluetooth phones, headsets etc sometimes don't work the way they should.

Example - I use a Nokia N96 with a Jabra JX20 headset - both high-end products from respected companies. The two are paired and work OK on first connection. But, if I go out of range, or switch the headset off for some reason, they then will not reconnect. I have to switch the headset off and re-boot the phone. In a given day this can happen several times. Most frustrating.

After 11 years of Bluetooth development, and with two products from a couple of the most respected manufacturers, this really shouldn't be happening. And this isn't isolated. A lot of kit passes through our hands, and similar things happen all the time. I'm in the industry, so I keep using this kit, but what will consumers be thinking?

I've put the question to the wireless community, and Peter Hauser, CEO of The Quality Factory came back with these observations?

I'm surprised nobody is willing to comment here!

Your question: "Why does Bluetooth still not work the way it should?" is more a question about "Quality" than it is about "Conformance to the Bluetooth standard" and therein lies the problem...

First of-all, there will always be a struggle between innovation and conformance to a standard. Every company wants, and needs to innovate. This implies that every company seeks to use the standards in new and interesting ways, and when they do, they make "assumptions" as to how other, compatible products, will react, thus creating the first problem...

For instance, the Bluetooth standards speak little about timing tolerances for commands and responses (beyond the standard timeouts). Some devices can respond very quickly to a command, while others cannot. If, however, a device is EXPECTING a delayed response and instead receives a very rapid one, if the firmware is intolerant, it could cause the device to lock-up.

Also - the Bluetooth standards do not currently address most multi-profile scenarios. It is only recently that the common "HFP, HSP, A2DP, and AVRCP" in a single device scenario was examined more closely for integration into the specifications AND the play/pause behavior (you know, where Play means Play, and Pause means Pause) has changed between the whitepaper and the specifications.

In short, unless companies are willing to invest in clarifying and standardizing their assumptions, these types of problems will continue.

And then, there's the issue of QUALITY.

With Bluetooth technology's pull towards commoditization, this complex technology is now in the hands of implementers who don't understand its intricacies and are building products based on new assumptions. Couple that with reduced development budgets for commodity products, and you have all of the makings of a reduction in product quality.

Teams are no longer "expected" to attend such events as UPF and to conduct extensive interoperability tests. Instead, they are expected to keep development budgets as low as possible.

All the while, new platforms are opening-up APIs that enable 3rd party applications to affect the Bluetooth performance. For instance, a mobile phone may have three separate music players on it. If one of those music players interacts with the Bluetooth A2DP/AVRCP (music) stack in an unexpected fashion, it could damage otherwise solid interoperability with wireless stereo headsets.

So - I guess the answer to your very simple question is quite complex.

If companies are going to do a really good job making their solutions "work" in the real world, they need to take the time to understand the assumptions made by products that already exist in the marketplace (of which there are many), find the similarities in these assumptions, and design accordingly.

Then, they need to TEST, TEST, and TEST again.

Thanks, Peter. Other contributions on this topic are very welcome. In the meantime, I may just have to change my own gadgets on a more often basis to check whether this situation is getting better, or worse.

After all, a Nokia N96 has been around for quite a while now ....

Which smartphone would Paris Hilton use?

After all, we all like to think we are as smart and sophisticated as celebs like Paris Hilton, Michael Jackson, Stephen Fry (http://www.stephenfry.com/ for the non-English out there, he is something of a local phenomenon), don't we?

You can debate that in your own time, but the fact is that it is time to change my phone. For approaching 5 years I have been a Nokia man - N81 (good, showed promise), N95 (excellent, wish I was still using it) and currently an N96 (awful - hangs all the time, terrible Bluetooth installation).

I have resisted the temptation of receiving email on my phone up until now, but I think it is time to bite the bullet. I am a sucker for phones with lots and lots of features, or smartphones as the world knows them, so the choice for me comes down to these: Nokia N97 (offers loads of promise, fantastic camera, but I really don't want another experience like the N96), a Blackberry (sooo good at mobile email and better at the other stuff too now, but do I really want to join the chino and polo shirt brigade?) or, of course, an iPhone.

Every person I know who has an iPhone LOVES IT. Everybody that has a Blackberry respects it. I don't know anybody with an N97 at the moment so this is a bit hard to gauge. I know that I will find an iPhone a joy to use, and it has good Bluetooth now, with stereo music streaming. I may well wish I had moved lock, stock and two smoking touchscreens to the Apple family years ago. But the iPhone won't play Flash content, which is a bit frustrating.

If I buy a Blackberry I will no doubt get the job done but will lose interest in the sexy gadget that I carry around me.

If the N97 is as 'hangy' as the N96, it will end up thrown against the wall.

None of the options comes without financial outlay, so the decision needs thought on many levels. What sort of a phone user do I want to appear to be? A style-driven ubercoolmonkey iPhone user? A guy who is worrying about whether his PowerPoint slides are ready for his next presentation? Or the guy picking up the shattered remains of his latest gadget acquisition?

So, let's go back to the beginning: which would Paris Hilton choose? Oh yes .... The one that is available with a pink cover and covered with more Swarovski crystals than there are barnacles on a Thames barge.

Sigh ... Maybe I will put the decision off for a while.

Twitter versus Facebook face-off

I was recently encouraged, for business reasons, to increase my web presence. I have been on several networking sites for some years – Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/vince.holton, LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/vinceholton), My Space – but I’ve never done much with them. I’m now also on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/vholton). I made a conscious decision to put more time into all of the sites. It is working so far, my connections on all the sites are growing. Well, with the exception of MySpace. I’m not really doing anything with that at all, hence no link above.

So far, and bear in mind I am something of an arriviste in these circles, my assessment is this. Twitter dominates. With 100+ people following me after just more than a week, and about the same in the opposite direction, Twitter traffic, via the very handy TweetDeck application, is fairly constant. So far, it seems that 95% of Twitter traffic is nonsense, and of little or no value. Having said that, the 5% that remains is often interesting and sometimes useful, and as an alternative IM mechanism, it works. But - I often do want to challenge those Tweeters that endlessly just post the same links, all day long. Get a life, people!

Facebook is without doubt more about maintaining social – family and friends – connections. And it is good from that point of view. Courtesy of Facebook, for example, I’m now in contact with two members of my family that I haven’t seen or spoken to for decades. Facebook is useful.

LinkedIn is about business. I have been on LinkedIn for many years and not done much other than the occasional profile update. I’m now much more active, and have my own discussion group – WPAN World (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2136483&trk=hb_side_g) – and this is paying dividends. I am building a large group of contacts that have real value for my primary business, which is my Incisor brand – an eMagazine and Internet TV business (www.incisor.tv).

So, in terms of direct benefit to my business, I view LinkedIn as the most relevant. Facebook is a nice site to be on, but for my B2B business, I am not sure of the value. Twitter? Well, I really have not made my mind up about that. It is a fact that I spend the most time engaged in Twitter-related communications. Is it a business tool? I don’t know yet. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.


Real world testing
UK TV has a programme called The Gadget Show. I shouldn’t need to explain what it is about. In last week’s programme they addressed the Facebook versus Twitter question with a face-off. The programme’s two presenters, Jason Bradbury and Gail Porter, who are both well-known proper, genuine minor celebrities thanks to their TV careers, were set the challenge of attracting as many people as possible to a free to attend event in central London that was to take place 5 days after the start of the challenge. This was an opportunity for everyday punters (that’s ordinary folk) to appear on TV. Not the sort of opportunity that normally takes a lot of selling.

Bradbury was to use Twitter to get people to come along, Porter was to use Facebook. Both had already been dedicated users of the two sites. The person who enticed the most people along to the event would be the winner.

Remember that these are two reasonably high-profile people with lots of friends, and this was guaranteed TV coverage for the men, women and children of our unwashed masses. And the two competitors both used all of the tricks of the social networking trade and put a lot of time into it.

And who won, and which social networking site was more effective? Well, it was Bradbury and Twitter. But the actual numbers achieved were surprisingly small. Bradbury’s Twitter campaign brought 208 and Porter’s Facebook campaign brought just 23 people. So Twitter was much more effective at getting a message to more people quickly.

There are still people out there that insist that Facebook as well as Twitter can be as useful to my business as I can easily see that LinkedIn is.

I’ve just got to work out how to make it so. Do you know?