Motorola agreed to acquire the assets of XtremeSpectrum, a start-up developing ultra-wideband (UWB) solutions for multimedia connectivity. Financial terms were not disclosed. The deal is expected to close within a week.
XtremeSpectrum supplies a UWB chipset capable of achieving 100 Mbps data rates while consuming less than 200 milliwatts (mW) of power. Potential applications include multimedia-centric devices, such as large screen displays, set-top boxes, DVD players, video recorders and digital cameras. The devices have already been sampled to several major consumer equipment manufacturers in 2003.
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- In October, XtremeSpectrum issued a letter to the IEEE promising to offer RAND-Z (reasonable and non-discriminatory-zero licensing) access to the essential patents pertaining to XtremeSpectrum’s proposal currently being considered for the IEEE802.15.3a standard, the high speed wireless PAN standard. The RAND-Z guarantees that the essential intellectual property within the XtremeSpectrum proposal will be available, royalty-free, to all of industry to the extent the proposal is selected as the IEEE 802.15.3a standard.
- XtremeSpectrum is headquartered in Vienna, Virginia. The company was co-founded in 1998 by Martin Rofheart, who previously was the founder and president of Soft Machine Resources (a privately held systems and engineering contracting firm), and John McCorkle , who previously developed UWB radar technology at the US Army Research Laboratories.
- In June 2002, XtremeSpectrum completed a $12 million round of venture funding with backing from POD Holding, a large Scandinavian venture fund; Cisco Systems; Motorola; Alliance Technology Ventures; Texas Instruments’ venture capital initiative, Granite Ventures; and Novak Biddle Venture Partners.
