Sigma Designs has been
dabbling in wireless HD technologies for
eons, so we aren't going to get too excited until we see this here system-on-chip (SoC) actually
hit some products that we care about. Still, the CoAir is a fairly sweet concept, wrapping integrated wireless, coax and gigabit Ethernet capabilities into one single chip aimed at whole home networking. Put simply (or as simply as possible), this chip is the world's first to "simultaneously deliver multiple independent streams of video and data over coax cable, Ethernet cable and wirelessly without compromising quality of service and throughput." Based on the WiMedia standard, it can reach speeds of up to 480Mbps with UWB (ultra-wideband) wireless streaming, and room-to-room linkage via UWB-over-coax can peg those same rates. What we have here is a great basis for building a whole home server on, but until said device
emerges and performs flawlessly, we'll just smile and carry on.
It's hard to say if ultra-wideband (UWB) will catch on (or get squashed by WHDI) in the wireless HD realm, but the applications for UWB outside of your living room are still many. Researchers at Virginia Tech have reportedly "developed an efficient compact ultra-wideband antenna (CUA) for a range of home, automotive, medical, and military applications," and according to inventory Taeyoung Yang, it has "achieved a near optimal performance for size and bandwidth." Better still, the design is said to be "cheap and simple to produce," which makes us hopeful for embedded wireless devices (receivers, STBs, Blu-ray players, etc.) sooner rather than later. We can't say for sure if this stuff is any closer to taking off in the mainstream, but at least we're making progress somewhere.
