Next Stop For 1394: Wireless World

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May 11, 2004 (8:51 AM EDT)

The 1394 Trade Association has approved a specification for the development of wireless FireWire applications, which will let 1394-enabled devices--both wired and unwired--to connect with each other.

"This spec came out six months early," said James Snider, executive director of the association in an interview Tuesday. "Small start-up entrepreneurial companies are already going full bore on it. You'll be seeing some prototype products before the end of the year."

For example, Snider speculated that there could be plug-in cards for set-top boxes enabling wireless connection to DVD players and hard-disk drives. Bob Heile, chief technology officer of Appairent Inc., said his firm is already working on developing products to take advantage of the new wireless spec. He added that the initial products are likely to be somewhat experimental in nature.

The new Protocol Adaptation Layer (PAL) for IEEE 1394 over IEEE 802.15.3 was approved Monday. In a statement, the trade association said: "The PAL is designed as a standard convergence layer between the 802.15.3 MAC and applications developed for wired 1394. It builds upon the 1394 infrastructure--for example, data formats, connection-management schemes, and time synchronization procedures--and takes advantage of the excellent quality of service available in 802.15.3."

Snider said developers working on wired 1394 products can now move quickly to work with RF developers to wirelessly connect a variety of devices, such as set-top boxes, HDTVs, tuners, and DVD players, all of which will be able to interoperate in home networks. Wireless bridges will incorporate wired 1394 nodes as well as a wireless 802.15.3 node. FireWire can transmit data at 400 Mbps speeds.

Bandwidth reservation policy for the wireless protocol is "first come, first served." Peter Johansson, chairman of the association's Wireless Working Group, said in a statement: "The specification is deterministic. As with 1394, the PAL does not attempt to assign bandwidth priorities to one product or task over another. . . .It is very efficient and very fair and takes advantage of the technical sophistication of the 802.15.3 MAC."

The trade association also said it will work with the WiMedia Alliance to jointly develop collaborative products. Snider, who has had a long career at Texas Instruments, said the collaboration with the WiMedia Alliance will bring smaller entrepreneurial firms together with large, established electronics companies.