Chip-maker Alereon Inc. has announced that they plan on releasing a new chip, the AL5100, to go wireless with the ubiquitous USB standard. The chip will utilize a Ultra-WideBand frequencies (UWB), frequency to free up devices from all those cumbersome USB cables. 
And, therein lies the Alereon chip’s advantage. Current wireless USB technologies utilize the frequencies that are not globally allowed – due to potential radar interference – and many of them utilize chips from Alereon.
Alereon spokesman, Mike Krell, says that the company hopes to have implementation of the AL5100 wireless USB chip in hard drives and cameras this year. The peripherals could then communicate with your computer through add-on cards or USB dongles.
The use of the super-high frequency UWB standard ensures that there will be no potential conflicts with speedy data transfers, but it also means that the signal is relatively weak – carrying no further than 30ft (Bluetooth says what?). And, we can eventually expect throughput of 480Mbps (the same as USB 2.0 through cables) at 10 feet, but the AL5100 is not capable of those speeds…yet. ABI Research analyst, Steve Wilson, echoes our sentiments when he says that, “Assuming that they do it right and it works, it’s going to be a pretty powerful technology for interconnecting devices.”
[Via: Yahoo]