The picture today is complicated enough, as incompatible wireless formats pursue their own niches. At least for the moment, those niches are easily defined. HomeRF is aimed at the home space. Wireless Ethernet — also known as 802.11, after the IEEE working group that defined the specification — has been aimed primarily at the office environment. And Bluetooth, the latest consumer wireless entry, has a very short range and is described as a personal-area network technology.

But all three formats have improved versions on the blackboard that pursue similar data transfer rates and comparable operating-distance ranges. And all three want to move into mainstream home networking. Perhaps the clearest illustration of the trend thus far is Lucent Technologies' new Orinoco product line, which seeks to drive wireless Ethernet deeper into the consumer segment.

"They are all going to go after the same market," predicted Stan Bruederle, chief analyst for wireless semiconductor applications at Dataquest Inc. (San Jose, Calif.). "Everybody sees a huge market in home networking, and the proponents of every group want to see their own standard used there."

Only one of these technologies, wireless Ethernet, is currently deployed at all. Designed for the corporate market, the 802.11 specification was officially approved by the IEEE last year, although systems have been running for at least two years. The original spec delivered data transfer rates of 2 Mbits/second, but last year's 802.11b revision brought speeds to 11 Mbits/s. The current range for wireless Ethernet systems is about 100 meters.

Fresh territory

"We are trying to push into spaces where wireless LANs haven't been used before," said Bryant Isaacs, general manager for Lucent's wireless communications and networking division. Besides the home market, Isaacs hopes to see 802.11b used in public spaces such as airports and hotels, and his company will roll out several products this week that support wireless data networks in homes, small offices and larger areas. The company is also producing chips used inside Apple Computer Inc.'s Airport wireless home networking systems, which have been shipping since the fall and use the 802.11b format.

The first products based on HomeRF are expected to ship this spring, although the specification was completed last January, according to Ben Manny, director of residential communications for Intel Corp. and chairman of the HomeRF Working Group. The consortium aims to bring in HomeRF at lower costs than 802.11 and thus to win broad acceptance in the consumer market. HomeRF also incorporates aspects of the Digital European Cordless Telephony (DECT) spec to make it more useful for wireless telephony than 802.11.

The current HomeRF spec offers data rates of 1.6 Mbits/s and a transmission range of 50 meters. Although Manny said the group is developing a version that offers 10-Mbit/s data rates, that plan could be held up because the Federal Communications Commission must approve the widening of the channel used by systems to broadcast information. The group has petitioned the FCC for permission to implement the modification and still awaits the final decision.

Another IEEE working group, 802.15, has been evaluating personal-area networks — the same concept advocated by the Bluetooth trade group. Bob Heile, chairman of the 802.15 working group and director of wireless opportunity development at GTE, said his group will adopt the Bluetooth standard as the initial 802.15 format.

Personal-area networks were originally conceived as an easy way to replace cables for downloading small files from consumer devices, but the industry has since seized on the potential for using such networks to link all of a user's electronic tools. The promise of a cell phone that tells an office PC when the staff meeting is scheduled, or a pager that notifies the home network that dinner will be late because the user is stuck in traffic, has generated a lot of buzz in a short period, and personal-area networks are now considered a major potential driver for electronics sales.

The first Bluetooth-enabled devices could ship within six months. The current Bluetooth format offers data rates of less than 1 Mbit/s, with an operating range limited to 10 meters.

Bandwidth boost

But the 802.15 group is also exploring the concept of faster personal-area networks (PANs), according to Bob Morris, co-chairman of the 802.15 high-rate study group and business manager for emerging markets at Motorola Inc. Eventually, Morris' study group expects to develop an improved version of Bluetooth that could deliver data rates of at least 20 Mbits/s. Although the format's working distance could increase as well, the initial goal is simply to expand the bandwidth over the current range.

The first proposals for a faster PAN format will be heard this week at an IEEE meeting in Albuquerque, N.M., and more are expected in May at a follow-up meeting in Seattle. Heile said the group hopes to settle on a spec within a year.

Part of the impetus for increasing PAN bandwidth came from Eastman Kodak Co., which wanted a format that would support downloading photos from a digital camera wirelessly — a task that requires more power than Bluetooth delivers. The increased bandwidth being explored for next-generation 802.15 will likely be sufficient to serve Kodak's intended application and a lot more. "Initially Bluetooth is a personal-area network, but with faster data rates it could also be used for home networking," said analyst Bruederle.

While most home networking now is seen as a way for households with multiple PCs and a single high-speed Internet connection to share Web access and peripherals such as printers, the long-term goal is far broader. The next-generation wireless networking technologies are on a schedule that could make them widely available on the consumer market in a few years. Broadband access is expected to be much more common by then, and fully wired homes will require a robust internal network to deliver high-definition digital TV to the living room, digital audio to various rooms, voice traffic to cordless or cellular phones, data files to the PC in the den, smaller control information to appliances and security systems, and so on. Behind the current battle for home-networking market presence is the desire to control access to a far larger market down the road.

"We are all trying to move toward the same space, but we are approaching it differently," said Tony Grewe, director of strategy and business development for the communications technology unit at Lucent's Microelectronics division (Allentown, Pa.). "There will definitely be some overlap in how we serve the market."

Will Strauss, president of market research firm Forward Concepts (Tempe, Ariz.), thinks the market isn't broad enough to support three standards. "There will definitely be some dropping out," he predicted. With all comers promising comparable data rates and ranges, he said, consumers will focus on ease-of-use and cost. Strauss believes none of the formats will see wide adoption until there is better standardization within the market.

Compatibility first

While it is possible that the three groups can work together to find enough common ground for a common format, Motorola's Morris said they must work on compatibility before they can tackle interoperability. All of the standards transmit information on the 2.4-GHz frequency — the same frequency used by most household microwave ovens. "The 2.4-GHz spectrum is starting to get pretty crowded," he said.

As it stands now, Morris expects to see performance hindered if, for example, a user with a Bluetooth-enabled PDA walks into a house using HomeRF. "It could slow down the data rate, or limit the range of the device, so you would have to put the PDA right next to the PC before it could download anything," he said.

That's one reason Morris and his group have been talking to members of both the 802.11 and HomeRF groups. He said it is likely that the next-generation versions of the formats will be compatible, a move that would allow all devices to use the same frequency without interference. It could also pave the way for interoperability, which would allow the devices not only to function on the same frequency but also to communicate with one another.

Alliances needed

Before that can happen, however, the players will need to forge political alliances, and that could require some hard choices. While Morris said it is technically possible to design chips that support all three formats, the chips would likely be complicated and expensive — too expensive for the consumer market.

It is far too early in the process for any of the organizations to pair off, but any potential alliance could leave the third format out in the cold. And that could be a costly snub as home networking becomes a more critical element within the wired home. Such functionality is expected to require bandwidth of at least 20 Mbits/second, which is on the long-term road map for most vendors.

The 2.4-GHz spectrum is expected to run out of gas for that generation of technology, and as a result wireless vendors are looking at the 5-GHz space. With higher frequency come higher power, faster rates and longer range.

Intel believes 802.11a, a 5-GHz version of 802.11 that can hit data rates as high as 40 Mbits/s, will be the ultimate meeting ground for wireless networks, although the migration could take several years. "We believe that at the right time we will be able to bring wireless business and home networks together under 5-GHz 802.11a," said Mark Christensen, general manager of Intel's Network Communications Group.

Lucent, a longtime champion of 802.11-based wireless LAN products and standards, also thinks the 802.11 formats will become the dominant technology in wireless LANs. "We think HomeRF is too little, too late," said Angela Champness, director of product marketing and business development at Lucent. Not only is it uncertain when — or even if — the FCC will grant HomeRF the needed approval to increase bandwidth, she said, but the group's exclusive focus on the home market may hinder the format's wide-scale deployment, because wireless Ethernet is already gaining acceptance in several markets. "Our view is that the whole industry is moving to 802.11b very rapidly," Champness said.

Intel plans to field a home networking product based on HomeRF this year but is also developing 802.11 products for the business world. Christensen demonstrated Intel's planned HomeRF products at the Intel Developer Forum earlier this month, the same week that Intel invested $100 million in Symbol Technologies (Holtsville, N.Y.), which makes 802.11 products for the factory floor and other embedded environments. Intel will develop 802.11 chip sets with Symbol and will sell them for business networks.

The 2.4-GHz space may prove the final battleground for wireless standards. "Clearly, these devices are looking at the same target market in the same environment and at the same time," said Dataquest's Bruederle. "These issues are going to have to be dealt with."