Samsung has developed a new wireless universal serial bus (W-USB) System-On-Chip which will allow 700MB of video or high quality audio data to be transferred to or from a device such as a mobile phone, TV, portable entertainment device or camera in less than a minute.
The secure technology which will go on sale late in 2009 is virtually identical to the performance of a cabled USB connection only without the wires. At the recent Panasonic Lumix launch in Singapore senior Panasonic executives admitted that they are currently working on similar technology as wireless built into a camcorder or compact digital camera is expensive and often slow they said.
With the new Samsung technology a camera with the processor built in can automatically dump its database of pictures whenever it’s near a home computer or an MP3 player that could connect to surround sound speakers without cords to pump out high quality audio.
Dr. Yiwan Wong, vice president, System LSI Division, Samsung Electronics states, “Connected consumer electronic products are the next step in enabling anytime, anywhere access to information and services. One of the keys to wireless connectivity is W-USB technology. While W-USB technology is just beginning to ramp up, its application will soon increase with the consumer electronic and mobile phone markets’ demand for wireless connectivity technology and UWB’s (ultra wide band) fast download speeds.”
According to the press release Samsung is also targeting wireless printers, beam projectors, wireless hard disks, wireless displays, and wireless speakers as possible applications of the technology.
According to Tech Daily the new technology works in the 3.1~10.6 GHz-band and uses CMOS technology. Samsung’s single chip solution consists of an ARM core, a UWB physical layer, and a memory controller with SD card, MMC, NAND flash memory, and a high-speed USB 2.0 OTG (On-The-Go) interface also built in.
The UWB transmitter offers a throughput of 480Mbps, with a speed under average payloads of around 120 Mbps, compared to 50 Mbps using the most advanced Bluetooth technology (currently not yet standard).
The signal is also hard to hack as it employs a 128 bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption algorithm. It also uses a static signal to further prevent signal monitoring.
