Key Technologies Pioneered by DS2 Become Basis for Future IEEE Standard for Broadband over Power Line Networks

Tuesday October 30, 4:17 pm ET


VALENCIA, Spain--(BUSINESS WIRE)--IEEE P1901 Working Group is taking initial steps towards selecting a single proposal that could become the basis of a future standard for broadband powerline communications at a recent meeting. The Physical and Medium Access Control (MAC) layers of the proposal incorporate key powerline technology originally introduced by DS2, such as data rates above 200 Mbps, dense multicarrier modulation, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) MAC and advanced Quality of Service (QoS) for Audio/Video applications. The proposal will now progress through the IEEE standard making process.


"When DS2 first demonstrated fully functional 200Mbps powerline technology in 2003, many in the industry expressed incredulity, believing that the market would not be ready for these major technology breakthroughs. We are glad to see that the IEEE standards process is moving towards the path we pioneered then. These developments validate DS2's vision of how powerline technology should progress to offer the best solution for the industry," said Jorge Blasco, DS2's CEO.

"Standards take time and a lot of work, but we are optimistic about the capabilities of our industry. Although we may have to wait until 2009 to see products compliant with the IEEE standard, we are moving in the right direction, on the road to developing a baseline. We still have a huge challenge in front of us: we need to work together as an industry to improve the quality of the existing proposal so that it can provide a technical solution to meet the needs of the BPL market," said Chano Gomez, VP Technology & Strategic Partnerships. Mr Gomez added that, "Our customers are accustomed to a very high standard of performance, reliability and manageability. The specification to be developed by IEEE P1901 needs to achieve and surpass these standards if we want it to gain market acceptance. We are confident that we can achieve this goal working together with the industry."

"Our technical leadership has allowed us to ship almost 3 million UPA-compliant 200 Mbps chips. The market for 200 Mbps powerline technology has shown a tremendous growth in the last year, and we are confident that the recent developments at IEEE P1901 will accelerate that growth even further. A large part of the Consumer Electronics (CE) industry was reluctant to integrate powerline technology in their products because of a lack of a single global standard. We now have an excellent opportunity to remove that obstacle by working together to create a single PHY/MAC specification that ensures complete interoperability between silicon vendors." said Jose Calero, DS2's CTO.