Cables Remain - Even in a Wireless World

By John MacWilliams, Bishop & Associates, Inc.

Many high volume cable assemblies are tied to equipment and peripheral input/output (I/O) applications. Some examples include: RJ11, RJ45, USB, IEEE1394, and a variety of other cable-end jacks and docks for PCs, peripherals, PDAs, mobile phones, and many other consumer devices.

Background
The volume of I/O cable assemblies has waxed and waned over the years in telecom, computer, and consumer electronics. These cycles occur as new interfaces are invented and older ones recede, although with connectors it is usually a slow process. The areas where we saw the most volume in recent years were dial-up internet connections, local area networks, host-to-peripheral serial, and USB in general.

Billions of I/O cables and connectors have been sold with the volume leaders being RCA jacks, RJ11, RJ45, and USB ─ which will soon, if it hasn’t already, surpassed the others. There are also a large number of other cable assembly applications in computer, telecom, industrial, medical, and mil-aero, when taken as a whole represent an excess of $10B per year.

The proliferation of mobile electronics has intensified the need to untether devices from their hosts and has created a higher demand for mobile office and personal electronics products. Bright minds have been at work conjuring up new types of wireless connections for the home, office, and mobile warrior. This gave birth to the 802.11a, b, and g (WiFi standard), as well as other emerging wireless standards. These include very short range pico-LAN wireless connections conceived at Intel, Ericsson, Motorola, and others. It was thought that the 802.11 standard would replace wired Ethernet up to 100m, and pico-LANs (i.e. Bluetooth) would be used to reduce cable clutter, untether mobile devices, and allow host-to-peripheral connections within a few feet of each other.

These inventors had noble objectives, knowing that if they were successful, these emerging technologies would be open to all competitors. This would result in an increased number of applications and suppliers, reduced costs, and create huge benefits to the user community. Largely, their desires have been met. Basically, they wanted to:

1.       Increase volume and create new markets for computer, communications, and consumer electronics that would benefit component and system manufacturers as well as end-users.

2.       Create hyper-volume markets for silicon ICs, which would be the engine of growth.

3.       Reduce cost and complexity by eliminating legacy connections and cables.

4.       Reduce cable clutter. This issue was foremost at Intel., As time went on, even more compelling reasons surfaced ─ WiFi became a premier “killer application” driving new PC sales, with Bluetooth a little slower out of the blocks. The cable clutter aspect is slow to be realized because it is very difficult to wipe out legacy connections (see below).
 

Driven by industry standards and Moore’s Law, WiFi and Bluetooth radio technology have progressed from discrete daughtercard, to hybrid circuit and MCM, to single-chip applications. Some examples of chip-level developments are below:

Future
Both WiFi and Bluetooth have become realities – WiFi more so, with its application in LANs preceding volume Bluetooth by several years. Now, Bluetooth is taking-off in personal electronics, particularly higher end mobile phones and cameras. Both Bluetooth and WiFi podules are being offered for USB and SD card interfaces, while many new devices have Bluetooth built-in as compatibility issues are eliminated.

In addition, several other wireless developments are being organized into industry consortiums, including 802.16 WiMax and Ultra Wide Band (UWB). UWB may supersede bandwidth-limited Bluetooth and wireless USB (WUSB) may be implemented as an UWB specification. Thus, the future of wireless seems almost unlimited, except where national governments get in the way to protect or control the airwaves or future economic glitches delay deployment.

Connector and Cable Encroachment
The impact of commercial wireless technologies on cable assemblies has been less than anticipated. Yes, it is happening. Legacy connectors have slowly declined. Wireless applications have eliminated some connectors and more cables. But new wireless applications create demand for other connector products, albeit without cables. One future example could be that UWB is implemented as a USB port (see Wisair example above). Instead of a cable, a small USB “dongle” and/or hub plugs-in to the I/O port and peripheral. The cable is gone but a new application is created until the function is integrated into the devices. So, wired alternatives to WiFi and Bluetooth will probably co-exist for some time to come and other opportunities will surface as a result of the demand-pull from wireless.

Lets do some simple back-of-the-napkin calculations:

WiFi & Bluetooth (BT) Penetration 2005-2010

What these numbers show is that while wireless penetration will be high, the number of connectors may actually increase slightly; i.e. there will be an impact, but it may not be as great as might be expected, e.g. 7B connectors in 2005 and 8B in 2010. USB is the big sleeper. If UWB rapidly takes hold in a WUSB format, then a major impact will be felt in USB because there are multiple USB ports in many systems.

What is your take on this? Will Wireless applications greatly impact the number of cables and connectors? Or, will there be, as the above estimate shows, a modest impact?

Additional comments from Bob Hult, Bishop & Associates, Inc.:

In the short haul, I agree with John's analysis that current and next generation wireless applications may coexist with increasing I/O and cable assembly connector volumes.

Most wireless systems will still have I/O ports and antennas that require coax terminations. There will also be different types of antennas: 4G, Bluetooth, Zigbee, WiFi, WiMax, and GPS. Growth in these applications will benefit connector suppliers who have value-added design and materials technology capabilities.

Long term, hard cable assemblies will most likely decline as personal entertainment, telecom, computer, GPS, and security devices are untethered from their hosts. Equipment designers will also minimize their use of cable assemblies within the box due to cost pressures. But, conversion to digital circuitry does promote the use of multiple circuit boards with wire-to-board interconnects. These applications will eventually be reduced by more highly integrated single-board systems, and those that use mezzanine stacking connectors between subsystems.

The bottom line is this; innovations such as wireless are both friend and foe to connectors and cable assemblies. We will always have constant innovation in the connector industry, responding to these system design developments with new products and increased volumes well into the future are what we do.