Wireless USB

The Universal Serial Bus (USB), with one billion units in the installed base, is the most successful interface in PC history. Projections are for 3.5 billion interfaces shipped by 2006. Benefiting from exceptionally strong industry support from all market segments, USB continues to evolve as new technologies and products come to market. It is already the de facto interconnect for PCs, and has proliferated into consumer electronics (CE) and mobile devices as well. USB enjoys strong brand recognition, has a well-recognized logo, and is supported by an experienced governing body the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF). Wireless USB will build on the success of wired USB, bringing USB technology into the wireless future. Usage will be targeted at PCs and PC peripherals, consumer electronics and mobile devices. To maintain the same usage and architecture as wired USB, the Wireless USB specification is being defined as a high-speed host-to device connection. This will enable an easy migration path for today's wired USB solutions. INTRODUCTION The Universal Serial Bus (USB), with one billion units in the installed base, is the most successful interface in PC history. Projections are for 3.5 billion interfaces shipped by 2006. Benefiting from exceptionally strong industry support from all market segments, USB continues to evolve as new technologies and products come to market. It is already the de facto interconnect for PCs, and has proliferated into consumer electronics (CE) and mobile devices as well. The Wireless USB is the first the high speed Personal Wireless Interconnect. Wireless USB will build on the success of wired USB, bringing USB technology into the wireless future. Usage will be targeted at PCs and PC peripherals, consumer electronics and mobile devices. To maintain the same usage and architecture as wired USB, the Wireless USB specification is being defined as a high-speed host-to-device connection. This will enable an easy migration path for today's wired USB solutions. This paper takes a brief look at the widely used interconnect standard, USB and in particular, at the emerging technology of Wireless USB and its requirements and promises. USB PORTS Just about any computer that you buy today comes with one or more Universal Serial Bus connectors on the back. These USB connectors let you attach everything from mice to printers to your computer quickly and easily. The operating system supports USB as well, so the installation of the device drivers is quick and easy, too. Compared to other ways of connecting devices to your computer (including parallel ports, serial ports and special cards that you install inside the computer's case), USB devices are incredibly simple!

Digital Watermarking Applications and Advantages

Digital watermarking is defined as the imperceptibly altering a work in order to embed information about that work. In the recent years copyright protection of digital content became a serious problem due to rapid development in technology. Watermarking is one of the alternatives to copyright-protection problem.

Digital watermarking can be classified as visible and invisible. The visible watermarks are viewable to the normal eye such as bills, company logos and television channel logos etc. This type of watermarks is easily viewable without any mathematical calculation but these embedded watermarks can be destroyed easily. In the case of invisible watermarks, the locations in which the watermark is embedded are secret, only the authorized persons extract the watermark. Some mathematical calculations are required to retrieve the watermark. This kind of watermarks is not viewable by an ordinary eye. Invisible watermarks are more secure and robust than visible watermarks. The main characteristics of Digital watermark are: Robustness: The watermark should be able to withstand after normal signal processing operations such as image cropping, transformation, compression etc. Imperceptibility: The watermarked image should look like same as the original image to the normal eye. The viewer cannot detect that watermark is embedded in it. Security: An unauthorized person cannot detect, retrieve or modify the embedded watermark. Depending on the ability of the watermark to withstand normal signal processing operations, digital watermarking can be categorized as robust, fragile and semi-fragile watermarking. Robust watermarks are detectable even after some image processing operations has been performed on the watermarked image such as image scaling, bending, cropping, and so on. Robust watermarks are mainly used for copyright protection. Fragile watermarks became invalid even if a slight modification is done to the watermarked image. Fragile watermarks are mainly used for authentication purpose. Semi-fragile watermarks allow some acceptable distortion to the watermarked image. Beyond this acceptance level if any modification is done to the watermarked image, the watermark will not be detected.

Gi-Fi
Gi-Fi will helps to push wireless communications to faster drive. For many years cables ruled the world. Optical fibers played a dominant role for its higher bit rates and faster transmission. But the installation of cables caused a greater difficulty and thus led to wireless access. The foremost of this is Bluetooth which can cover 9-10mts. Wi-Fi followed it having coverage area of 91mts. No doubt, introduction of WiFi wireless networks has proved a revolutionary solution to last mile problem.However, the standard's original limitations for data exchange rate and range, number of channels, high cost of the infrastructure have not yet made it possible for Wi-Fi to become a total threat to cellular networks on the one hand, and hard-wire networks, on the other. But the mans continuous quest for even better technology despite the substantial advantages of present technologies led to the introduction of new, more up-todate standards for data exchange rate i.e., Gi-Fi. Gi-Fi or Gigabit Wireless is the world's first transceiver integrated on a single chip that operates at 60GHz on the CMOS process. It will allow wireless transfer of audio and video data up to 5 gigabits per second, ten times the current maximum wireless transfer rate,at one-tenth of the cost,usually within a range of 10 meters.It utilizes a 5mm square chip and a 1mm wide antenna burning less than 2 watts of power to transmit data wirelessly over short distances, much like Bluetooth. The development will enable the truly wireless office and home of the future. As the integrated transceiver is extremely small, it can be embedded into devices. The breakthrough will mean the networking of office and home equipment without wires will finally become a reality.

There are many usage cenarios that can be addressed by Gi-Fi. The following are some mobility usage applications of Gi-Fi. House hold appliances:
Consumers could typically download a high definition movie from a kiosk in a matter of seconds to a music player or smart phone and having got homecould play it on a home theatre system or store it on a home server for future viewing, again within a few seconds. high speed internet access, streaming content download (video on demand, HDTV, home theater, etc.), real time streaming and wireless data bus for cable replacement It makes the WIRELESS HOME AND OFFICE OF THE FUTURE Within five years, we expect Gi-Fi to be the dominant technology for wireless networking. By that time it will be fully mobile, as well as providing low- cost, high broadband access, with very high speed large files swapped with in seconds which will develop wire less home and office of future. If the success of Wi-Fi and the imminent wide usage of WiMAX is any indication, Gi-Fi potentially can bring wireless broadband to the enterprise in an entirely new way.