TMCnet August 01, 2008
Research and Markets: ZigBee and UWB Can Play Important Role in UGS Development
By Jayashree Adkoli
Research and Markets, a ‘One-Stop-Shop’ for market research reports, announced that it has released the second issue of the report entitled "Unattended Ground Sensors: Communications Technologies and Markets", in order to update the previous information and as well up-date the present marketing data on WSN (Wireless sensor network) and UGS (Unattended Ground Sensors).
Research and Markets is said to be a source for international market research and market data. They also provide industry newsletters from specialist research firms and market analysts. They primarily provide businesses with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, top companies, new products and the latest trends.
The report basically discusses on WSN-UGS communications technologies and markets analysis and assessments, mainly concentrating on two advanced technologies, UWB (Ultra-WideBand (News - Alert)) and ZigBee that were designed with UGS in mind.
The report study shows that ZigBee and UWB are two primary communications technologies that have the capability to support successful UGS development.
Defense and space news provider, GlobalSecurity.org, says “UGS consist of a variety of sensor technologies that are packaged for deployment and perform the mission of remote target detection, location and/or recognition. Ideally, the UGS are small, low cost and robust, and are expected to last in the field for extended periods of time after deployment. They are capable of transmitting target information back to a remote operator. These devices could be used to perform various mission tasks including perimeter defense, border patrol and surveillance, target acquisition, and situation awareness.”
The report says that the UGSs that were earlier utilized for military applications are now entering the commercial market to obtain information, such as - environmental, situational and other data. These UGSs are said to be ideal for application where it is difficult reachable for humans places.
Some of the commercial applications of the UGSs start from SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) and going even to Personal Body LAN. The report depicts that the basic advantage of such WSN-UGS sensors is their ability to use wireless communications between the area of deployment and an operator who may be located miles from the area of UGS operations.
According to the report, large-scale WSN-UGS integration in embedded communications structures shows how technology is evolving and special characteristics of UGS differentiate them from traditional wireless networks.
Even WSN-UGS have various constrains that are not typical for other wireless networks, such as: Node size, Dependence on the battery life, Bandwidth, Extreme conditions for operations, and large number of nodes.
The report that mainly concentrates on two advanced technologies, UWB and ZigBee, which were designed keeping UGS in mind, are completely distinguishable in nature.
According to the report, these technologies - UWB and ZigBee are ideal for UGS communications specifics, such as extremely low power consumption, low levels of transmission with noise-like signals, high security and low-to middle speeds of transmission.
The ZigBee technology is said to be a low-cost, low-power, wireless mesh networking standard. With low cost feature- the technology can be widely deployed in wireless control and monitoring applications. The low power-usage feature facilitates devices’ longer life with smaller batteries, and the mesh networking provides high reliability and larger wireless coverage range. This technology is usually targeted at radio-frequency (RF) applications that require a low data rate, long battery life, and secure networking.
The Ultra-wideband technology is said to be a radio technology that can be utilized for short-range high-bandwidth communications by using a large portion of the radio spectrum. The technology can be used at very low energy levels. The technology makes use of pulse coded information with sharp carrier pulses at a bunch of center frequencies in logical connex. It is widely used in non cooperative radar imaging, target sensor data collection, precision locating and even tracking applications.
The report that incorporates marketing and technical analysis of both UWB and ZigBee technologies have accent on their applicability to support WSN-UGS mesh infrastructures.
The report also includes detailed analysis of UGS specifics in the WSN environment.
The report is said to be useful for service providers, retail operators, vendors, network operators and managers, investors and end users, who are interested in having a deeper understanding of UGS-based structures opportunities and barriers.
The report helps systems vendors, integrators and others by providing them with analysis and assessment of competing products currently available as well as an estimation of the overall opportunities that are created in the future.
Even the end-users are said to be benefited with the report that provides thorough understanding of product’s market and capabilities as well as the economics of using ZigBee and UWB technologies, in order to improve cost efficiency of Wireless Sensor Networks based on UGS.
Some of the key topics covered in the report were: Introduction, UWB: Technology and Market Specifics, ZigBee, Competition Landscape, UGS Technology – Specifics and Applications, and UGS Vendors.
The second issue of the report that was created for up-dates on the issue has collected information from various Web sites. Even evaluation of publicly available marketing and technical publications were also utilized while creating this report. Telephone conversations and interviews were conducted with industry analysts, technical experts and executives while making analysis. Many industry and trade publications, conferences and seminars were used as references while making the report.
Jayashree Adkoli is a TMCnet Contributing Editor.
© Copyright 2008, Technology Marketing Corporation
