Alereon, a fabless semiconductor house specializing in wireless chips for Ultrawideband (UWB) and Wireless USB (W-USB), has released an evaluation kit (EVK) for developing and testing “real world” UWB applications. The AL4000-EVK is based on the company's AL4000 series UWB chipset, which operates at speeds from 55Mbps to 480Mbps — nearly five times faster than any other UWB personal area network (PAN) chipset, according to Alereon.

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UWB is a next-generation wireless technology that enables high data throughput with low power consumption for distances of up to 10 meters — a range considered to be appropriate for many requirements of tomorrow's “digital home.” According to an Intel UWB whitepaper, UWB has succesfully run at up to 252 Mbps, with 480 Mbps expected in the not-too-distant future. Additionally, Intel envisions the possibility of other protocols running on top of UWB technology, including wireless USB (WUSB), IEEE 1394, next-generation Bluetooth, and Universal Plug and Play (UPnP).

The AL4000-EVK combines Alereon's AL4300-EVB MAC and AL4400-EVB PHY evaluation boards with a VIA EPIA-MII Mini-ITX motherboard in a compact enclosure. The motherboard is based on a 1.2GHz VIA Eden C3 processor and incorporates multiple USB, IEEE 1394 (Firewire), Ethernet, video, audio, and serial ports. The system also includes a 60GB hard drive and a DVD drive.

AL4000-EVK Block Diagram
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The heart of the new test platform is the AL4300-EVB MAC evaluation board. The PCI-based MAC provides an option slot for an MBOA-compatible PHY module based on Alereon's high performance transceiver and baseband processor. MBOA stands for Multiband ODFM Alliance, an industry group focused on global UWB standardization based on an approach called Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM).

The kit is normally supplied with Windows XP and associated drivers (and therefore also supports Windows XP Embedded), but VxWorks and Linux support are available on request, Alereon says. The provided application software includes a streaming video demonstration, a traffic generation utility, and a performance analysis utility, according to Alereon.

Alereon says it is currently accepting orders for the AL4000-EVK, with first units expected to ship within several weeks.

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