Ecma International is developing an International Standard for 60 GHz technology for very high data rate short range unlicensed communications.

The new standard is aiming at bulk data transfer, high-definition multimedia streaming and wireless personal area networking applications.

At its meeting from 30 January to 2 February in Atlanta, Ecma?s TC32-TG20 task group reviewed proposal presentations for a complete (PHY+MAC) standard for low power 2 to 10 Gigabit/s data transport. The standard intends to ensure compatibility and interoperability for different usage/application scenarios by defining a common framing structure.

At the Atlanta meeting, ETRI, GEDC (Georgia Tech), Intel, KU (Korea University), Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. (Panasonic), NewLANS, Philips and Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co. Ltd., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. reached a major milestone by analysing standard proposals that will give rise to a slew of next generation wireless applications.

"Wireless interconnects need to be rethought to provide easy-to-use connectivity at multi-gigabit data rates serving large file transfer and high definition multimedia streaming applications for consumer electronics, medical and computing devices," said Ruud van Bokhorst, Director of Standardization with Philips.

"Enabling wireless multi-gigabit data rates at the lowest power and lowest cost ever achieved is a tremendous advantage of the emerging CMOS based 60GHz technology," said Dr. Haksun Kim, VP of Wireless Solutions Lab in Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co., LTD.