Multiband-OFDM Alliance seeks to lift UWB licensing clouds
Multiband-OFDM Alliance seeks to lift UWB licensing clouds
By Patrick Mannion, EE Times
December 15, 2003 (10:30 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20031208S0085
MANHASSET, N.Y. Texas Instruments Inc. announced plans Monday (Dec. 8) to offer royalty-free licenses for any patents it holds within the Multiband-OFDM Alliance's (MBOA) ultrawideband proposal should the proposal be ratified by the IEEE 802.15.3a task group working on a high-speed, short-range wireless physical layer. The announcement removes a cloud that has hung over the proposal, and is expected to be followed in quick succession by similar announcements from other patent-holding members of the Alliance. The patent licensing issue came to the fore as the IEEE group met formally for the first time in July to discuss its options for that standard. In late October, XtremeSpectrum Inc., now the UWB operations division of Motorola Inc., and the competing proposal for the .15.3a standard filed a RAND-Z (reasonable and non-discriminatory-zero) statement with the IEEE. While M otorola has agreed to honor the statement with the purchase of XSI, it has declined to comment on what, if any, intellectual property it holds within the direct-sequence UWB proposal until spinning off its SPS group. Until now, according to MBOA spokespersons, the group has been striving to complete a similar RAND-Z statement, but has been hampered by the sheer logistics of achieving consensus from its 34 members. However, according to Mark Bowles, director of marketing for Staccato Communications Inc. (San Diego), all major contributors to the MBOA proposal have filed a RAND-Z statement with the IEEE. "Staccato, TI, Wisair, Alereon and Intel have the majority of all IP relevant to the current MBOA proposal and have filed RAND-Z," said Bowles. "Other MBOA members may hold IP now or in the future and they too may file RAND-Z at some point." According to Bowles, the filing by the five companies addresses the concerns of IEEE members opposed to the MBOA proposal.
Related Semiconductor IP
- NFC wireless interface supporting ISO14443 A and B with EEPROM on SMIC 180nm
- DDR5 MRDIMM PHY and Controller
- RVA23, Multi-cluster, Hypervisor and Android
- HBM4E PHY and controller
- LZ4/Snappy Data Compressor
Related News
- SiWorks Inc. Announces FFT and Viterbi Cores For The Emerging IEEE 802.15.3a Multi-band OFDM UWB Standard
- Multiband OFDM Alliance releases UWB PHY specs
- Via Licensing and MPEG LA Unite to Form Via Licensing Alliance, the Largest Patent Pool Administrator in the Consumer Electronics Industry
- Via Licensing Alliance Appoints Three New Members to its Board of Directors
Latest News
- CAST Releases First Dual LZ4 and Snappy Lossless Data Compression IP Core
- Arteris Wins “AI Engineering Innovation Award” at the 2025 AI Breakthrough Awards
- SEMI Forecasts 69% Growth in Advanced Chipmaking Capacity Through 2028 Due to AI
- eMemory’s NeoFuse OTP Qualifies on TSMC’s N3P Process, Enabling Secure Memory for Advanced AI and HPC Chips
- AIREV and Tenstorrent Unite to Launch Advanced Agentic AI Stack