Sony, NXP to develop short-range wireless chip
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Partnership will produce secure processor that enable mobile phones to be used for "contactless payments."
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MacCentral - The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) Monday is releasing a three-year road map for Bluetooth short-range wireless technology that includes a tripling of bandwidth and the ability to multicast signals to seven other users.
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The semiconductor unit of Philips Electronics is adopting a new name, NXP, and a new strategy to supply chips to the advanced electronics products market.
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Upcoming chip set will support 802.11a, b, and g networks.
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Sony revealed new details Monday on the chip that will power the next version of its PlayStation video game machine and said development is on track to deliver products based on the chip next year.
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SAN FRANCISCO - Backers of two different types of UWB (ultrawideband) networks next week will announce moves toward consumer products that use the short-range wireless technology.
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(InfoWorld) - Texas InstrumentsÂ (TI) will develop chips for low-power devices based on a new short-range wireless Bluetooth specification, the company said Tuesday. The move comes on the heals of aÂ decision by NokiaÂ earlier this month to roll its low-power Wibree technology into the new ultra low-power (ULP) Bluetooth specification. While Bluetooth has been used mostly to connect larger devices such as headsets, keyboards and mouses to stereos and PCs, the new ultra low-power specification aims to connect much smaller button-cell battery-powered devices, like watches or sensors attached to a user's body. ULP Bluetooth uses the same 2.4GHz frequency as Bluetooth. ULP Bluetooth will have a range up to 10 meters (33 feet), similar to the Bluetooth Class 2 specification, which requires more energy. A button-cell battery powered device, equipped with the technology, will have an average operating life of one year and transmit data at a speed up to 1Mbps High-power Bluetooth Class 3 has a range up to 100 meters. TI already produces chips for Bluetooth devices as well as devices based on the ZigBee ultra low-power specification. The chip maker views ULP Bluetooth and ZigBee as "complementary" technologies. ZigBee, for instance, is a mesh networking technology designed to support thousands of nodes with some restrictions on quality of service and latency, according to the ZigBee Web site. By comparison, ULP Bluetooth is an ad hoc networking technology that links a smaller number of nodes to devices with high quality of service and low latency. TI will develop chips for both types of ULP Bluetooth implementations: a single-mode implementation for watches, sensors and other tiny devices to communicate with each other; and a dual-mode implementation to communicate with both single-mode and traditional Bluetooth devices, such as handsets. Pricing and product availability details were not disclosed. Â
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A future version of Bluetooth will allow connections to hop on Wi-Fi networks when additional bandwidth is required.
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Bluetooth -- a short-range wireless technology -- is finally coming of age.
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Chipmaker Broadcom has developed a way to integrate Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and FM reception capabilities onto a single chip, allowing manufacturers to produce devices with the functionality without sacrificing cost, size or battery life.
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(InfoWorld) - Nokia has developed a new, short-range wireless technology that it says could improve on some of the shortcomings of Bluetooth. Called Wibree, the technology aims to be a lot more power-efficient than Bluetooth, which means it could be used in smaller and less costly devices. It can also use the same radio and antenna components as Bluetooth, helping keep costs down further, said Bob Iannucci, head of Nokia's research center, who unveiled the technology in Helsinki on Tuesday. The technology could compete with Bluetooth in the workplace as a way to link keyboards and other peripherals to computers. But it could also have more interesting applications for consumers, in devices such as wrist watches, toys, and sports equipment. Because of its low power requirements, it could be used in tiny sensors that could be worn by a jogger, for example, to collect information about his heart rate or distance travelled. The sensors could send the information to a mobile phone via Wibree, which in turn would upload the information to a Web site where the jogger could compare his performance with that of other runners or get advice from a trainer. Wibree sensors could also be placed in a gold club and used to upload data to the Internet about a player's swing, again via a mobile phone, where a golf instructor could offer advice about improving his or her game. The technology is being designed to communicate with a phone or other device within 10 meters, and can transfer data at 10Mbps, Nokia said. It can be implemented in a stand-alone chip or as a dual-mode chip that includes both Bluetooth and Wibree. More information isÂ available here.Â  Bluetooth has inherent power limitations because it includes a fixed packet-size and frequency-hopping technology, Iannucci said. Wibree uses a different modulation technique that does a better job of avoiding interference, which helps reduce its power requirements, he said. Several companies are working with Nokia to define the Wibree specification, including Broadcom, Epson, and Nordic Semiconductor, Nokia said. They hope to submit the technology to a standardization process, which could help it to gain wider support. Nokia hopes eventually to license Wibree to manufacturers that wish to use it. Wibree isn't the only contender for use in wireless sensors, however. Zigbee is an ongoing standardization project and has similar characteristics to Wibree. However, because Wibree uses the same radio as Bluetooth, the economics of deploying it are better, according to Iannucci. Bluetooth's supporters are working to lower its power consumption and reduce other drawbacks with the technology.
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Manufacturer will produce a new multimode, single-chip 3G RF transceiver based on its SMARTi UE chip.
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A group of technology companies  including Texas Instruments Inc. TXN.N, STMicroelectronics  STM.PA and Broadcom Corp. BRCM.O, on Thursday said they  will propose a new wireless networking standard up to 10 times  the speed of the current generation.
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Cell phone market leader Nokia   NOK1V.HE unveiled a new short-range wireless connection on   Tuesday that is smaller and more energy-efficient than current   Bluetooth technology and can be used in devices such as   watches.
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Meat wagons hitched to wireless bandwagon
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Touch, transmit and go CES Sony has unveiled its own answer to Near Field Communication: a contactless data transfer system dubbed TransferJet that carries data at speeds of up to 560Mb/s.â¦
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InfoWorld - Texas Instruments&#160;(TI) will develop chips for low-power devices based on a new short-range wireless Bluetooth specification, the company said Tuesday.