UWB Startup Gets VC Bump

Ultra-wideband (UWB) chip startup Alereon Inc. has grabbed $20 million of series B venture funding and says it will have chips in production by the first quarter of 2006.
This latest round, led by Austin Ventures, brings Alereon's funding total to $54.5 million. A spokesman for Alereon says the company will use the capital to get its first UWB chips in production and complete its second-generation product.
UWB chips, for those of you that have forgotten -- and it has been a while -- use simpler and higher-performance RF-to-digital conversion techniques than conventional narrowband radios. This makes UWB suitable for a huge range of battery-powered devices. The catch is that at high data rates, UWB is limited to a relatively short range.
It's been a quiet year for UWB boosters overall, perhaps due to a sense that the technology has not yet lived up to its potential. (See Ultrawideband Preps for CES.)
But there are signs that this has just been a temporary lull, as companies like Freescale Semiconductor Inc. (NYSE: FSL) are showing interest. Freescale recently demonstrated its Direct Sequence UWB (DS-UWB) chips operating with standard Bluetooth software stacks at data transfer speeds of up to 110 Mbit/s.
— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Unstrung
This latest round, led by Austin Ventures, brings Alereon's funding total to $54.5 million. A spokesman for Alereon says the company will use the capital to get its first UWB chips in production and complete its second-generation product.
UWB chips, for those of you that have forgotten -- and it has been a while -- use simpler and higher-performance RF-to-digital conversion techniques than conventional narrowband radios. This makes UWB suitable for a huge range of battery-powered devices. The catch is that at high data rates, UWB is limited to a relatively short range.
It's been a quiet year for UWB boosters overall, perhaps due to a sense that the technology has not yet lived up to its potential. (See Ultrawideband Preps for CES.)
But there are signs that this has just been a temporary lull, as companies like Freescale Semiconductor Inc. (NYSE: FSL) are showing interest. Freescale recently demonstrated its Direct Sequence UWB (DS-UWB) chips operating with standard Bluetooth software stacks at data transfer speeds of up to 110 Mbit/s.
— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Unstrung
FEATURED VIDEO
UPCOMING LIVE EVENTS
February 7-9, 2023, Virtual Event
February 15, 2023, Virtual Event
March 15-16, 2023, Embassy Suites, Denver, CO
March 21, 2023, Virtual Event
May 15-17, 2023, Austin, TX
December 6-7, 2023, New York City
UPCOMING WEBINARS
February 7, 2023
Optical Networking Digital Symposium - Day 1
February 9, 2023
Optical Networking Digital Symposium - Day 2
February 14, 2023
Achieve Your Growth Potential with Next-Gen Content Delivery
February 15, 2023
Digital Divide Digital Symposium
February 16, 2023
SCTE® LiveLearning for Professionals Webinar™ Series: Getting the Edge on Edge Computing
Webinar Archive
PARTNER PERSPECTIVES - content from our sponsors
How 5G Thrives ASEAN Digital Economy
By Huawei
Capitalizing On 5G Innovation To Deliver Breakthroughs At The Edge
By Kerry Doyle, sponsored by ZTE
All Partner Perspectives