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PR-Pulse~Link teams with Analog Devices for CWave UWB wireless jpeg2000 demo at HDTV conference

London – August 22, 2005 – Pulse~LINK, Inc., developer of CWave Ultra Wideband (UWB) communications, and Analog Devices, Inc., a global leader in high-performance semiconductors for signal processing applications, have joined forces to demonstrate the industry’s first wireless transmission of real-time High Definition video.  The joint demonstration, featuring a side-by-side comparison of MPEG and JPEG2000 across Pulse-LINK’s UWB wireless link, will take place at the DisplaySearch HDTV Conference, August 23-24, 2005, in Beverly Hills, CA.

Pulse~LINK will combine its CWave UWB wireless technology with ADI’s ADV202, the only single-chip implementation of the JPEG2000 standard, to showcase opportunities for real-time wireless HD gaming applications and the highest quality viewing experience for wireless connectivity between devices such as High Definition Television Displays, Projectors, DVD players, Set-top-boxes, Game Consoles, Digital Recorders, Home Theaters and PC work stations.

The ADV202 significantly reduces the visual perception of errors that occur in wireless transmission channels and is capable of wirelessly delivering cinema quality images in the home when combined with the bandwidth of Pulse~LINK’s CWave UWB technology.  Unlike MPEG, that degrades the original source HDTV content during compression, ADI’s JPEG2000 is scalable for both mathematically and visually lossless video encoding.  Pulse~LINK’s CWave™ UWB, which offers up to 1Gbps wireless data rates, provides more than sufficient bandwidth to support the higher data rates required to wirelessly transmit this superior video encoding.

“Pulse~LINK's CWave UWB technology brings extremely high wireless data carrying capacity, isochronous delivery, and scalable quality of service suitable for High Definition digital video over wireless channels,” states Bill Bucklen, product line director, High Speed Converters, Analog Devices.  “It is an ideal wireless solution to introduce the ADV202 to the consumer electronics market.”

Several complementary features offered by each technology can be used in conjunction with one another to enable viewing experiences never before possible for the consumer. For example, both JPEG2000 and CWave UWB feature extremely low latency.  In usage scenarios for wireless HD gaming, consumers will not tolerate a delayed response between what they are doing on the gaming machine and what is displayed on the monitor.  The MPEG compression used for wireless connectivity today creates such a delay.   The combination of JPEG2000 and CWave UWB reduces latencies to such an imperceptible level that this delay is effectively nonexistent.

The difference in the way JPEG2000 is encoded offers additional advantages for both improved visual quality and increased transmission range.  Inter-frame spatial encoding methods used by MPEG result in wireless data streams that are extremely susceptible to channel errors – this phenomenon is what often results in artifacts and the “blocky pixelation” viewers sometimes see on digital programming that is MPEG encoded.  This type of encoding causes the resulting MPEG data streams to be extremely susceptible to wireless channel errors, requiring significant Forward Error Correction overhead and a very stringent Bit-Error-Rate. MPEG degrades quickly with Bit-Error-Rate (BER), while JPEG2000 is capable of maintaining a quality video stream with BER rates at which MPEG video would be un-viewable.

“The ADI / Pulse~LINK side-by-side comparison of MPEG and JPEG2000 demonstrates that, by using the same digital video reference source, the image quality and range of the JPEG2000 stream performs well at significantly less stringent Bit-Error-Rates than those required for MPEG,” states John Santhoff, Pulse~LINK Founder and Chief Technology Officer.   “Using our CWave technology, we are able to demonstrate a robust high quality wireless HDTV stream with JPEG2000 - even without Forward Error Correction enabled.”

Pulse~LINK's CWave is the only UWB technology capable of supporting Gigabit wireless data rates.  Because of its superior data rates, Pulse~LINK can uniquely pursue cable replacement for the highest quality video technologies such as HDMI/DVI and 1394 b/c, which typically require Gigabit data rates.  These technologies are applicable in devices such as Digital TV (plasma, LCD, HDTV, RPTV, CRT), Digital Set-top-box, Video/Audio Receivers, Video Game Consoles, DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-Ray players and recorders, Video Cameras, Home Theater Projectors, and Multimedia PCs as well as aftermarket “cards and dongles” that would interface through existing HDMI/DVI/1394/USB ports in these devices.

Pulse~LINK’s Gigabit MAC will provide significant throughput superiority to any other wireless MAC technology available today.  Pulse~LINK is expecting to sample chipsets to OEM partners by year-end.

For additional information about Analog Devices, please visit: http://www.analog.com. Additional information about the DisplaySearch HDTV Conference 2005 is available at: http://www.displaysearch.com/hdtvconference

About Pulse~LINK, Inc.

Pulse~LINK, Inc. is a privately held Delaware Corporation founded in June 2000 and headquartered in Carlsbad, California.  Pulse~LINK has over 230 issued and pending patents pertaining to Ultra Wideband wired and wireless communications technology.  In addition to demonstrating Gigabit wireless UWB transmissions and pioneering secure UWB Wireless Local Area Networking, Pulse~LINK is the first and only company to demonstrate UWB over home electric power lines and cable television networks.  For additional information, please visit the Pulse~LINK web site at: http://www.pulselink.net