WiMedia Certifies First PHYs for High Band Operation, Paving the Way for Global UWB Adoption

SAN RAMON, CA--(Marketwire - November 4, 2008) - The WiMedia Alliance today announced the certification of the first three Ultra Wideband (UWB) physical layer chipsets (PHYs) to support the WiMedia Spectrum Extension Release (SER) announced in August. The chips from Alereon, Realtek and Staccato Communications support operation in Band Groups 1 and 3 (3.1 to 4.8GHz and 6.3 to 7.9GHz, respectively). The Alereon and Staccato chips also support operation in Band Group 6 (7.4 to 9.0GHz).

"The certification of these PHYs from member companies is a critical step towards establishing UWB as the worldwide standard for Personal Area Networks (PANs) in the PC, CE and mobile market segments," said Stephen Wood, WiMedia president.

The SER specification is an extension to previous WiMedia specifications and provides support for worldwide operation on hopping channels above 6GHz to address mobile applications in particular (including Bluetooth®) on a global basis.

In addition, the Alliance announced that the three chipsets from Alereon, Realtek and Staccato were qualified as official PHY test beds for band groups (BG) 1 (3.1 to 4.8GHz) and 3 (6.3 to 7.9GHz). These test beds are precursors to the setup of independent test labs (ITLs) to perform WiMedia Certification testing. In turn, ITLs can offer more widely available Certification testing both globally and on demand.

Further information on the WiMedia Alliance and its certification program is available at www.wimedia.org.

About the WiMedia Alliance

The WiMedia Alliance is a not-for-profit open industry association that promotes and enables the rapid adoption, regulation, standardization and multi-vendor interoperability of ultra-wideband (UWB) worldwide. The basis for the industry's first UWB standards (published by Ecma International), WiMedia UWB is optimized for wireless personal-area networks delivering high-speed (480Mbps and beyond), low-power multimedia capabilities for the PC, CE, mobile and automotive market segments. Emphasizing peaceful coexistence with other wireless services, the WiMedia UWB Common Radio Platform is designed to operate with application stacks developed by the Certified Wireless USB Promoter Group, the Bluetooth-SIG and proprietary implementations. WiMedia board members include Alereon, CSR, Intel, Nokia, ST-NXP Wireless, Samsung Electronics, Staccato Communications, Stonestreet One, and Wisair.

The Bluetooth® word mark is a registered trademark owned by Bluetooth SIG, Inc.

Contact Information: Contact: Susan Cain WiMedia Alliance PR (503) 538-1229