Nokia introduced its “Wibree” as an open industry initiative for extending local connectivity to small devices, much like Bluetooth. Target applications include mobile devices or personal computers, and small, button cell battery power devices such as watches, wireless keyboards, toys and sports sensors.
The Wibree radio technology, which was developed by Nokia Research Center, consumes only a fraction of the power compared to other such radio technologies, enabling smaller and less costly implementations.
Key aspects of Wibree include:
- Operates in 2.4 GHz ISM band
- Physical layer bit rate of 1 Mbps
- Link distance of 5-10 meters.
- Optimized for applications requiring extremely low power consumption, small size and low cost.
- Provides ultra low power idle mode operation, simple device discovery and reliable point-to-multipoint data transfer with advanced power-save and encryption functionalities.
- Link layer provides means to schedule Wibree traffic in between Bluetooth transmissions.
- Can be implemented either as stand-alone chip or as Bluetooth-Wibree dual-mode chip. The small devices like watches and sports sensors will be based on stand-alone chip whereas Bluetooth devices will take benefit of the dual-mode solution, extending Bluetooth device connectivity to new range of smallest devices.
Nokia said it is committed to bring the new technology available to the market as fast as possible.
The company is collaborating with a group of leading companies representing semiconductor manufacturers, device vendors and qualification service providers, including Broadcom, CSR, Epson and Nordic Semiconductor. The technology will be made broadly available to the industry through an open and preferably existing forum.
According to Nokia’s estimate, the first commercial version of the interoperability specification will be available during second quarter of 2007.
http://www.wibree.com/http://www.nokia.com