CSR shows off Bluetooth, Wi-Fi working well together to quell doubts
CSR plc (CSR.L) demonstrated the seamless coexistence of its Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technologies at London's Wireless Event at Olympia today.
The company's BlueCore4 Bluetooth technology and UniFi-1 Wi-Fi solution was shown to operate on the same board and was demonstrated in four test scenarios.
Simon Finch, VP of CSR's Wi-Fi strategic business unit said there has been mass adoption of Bluetooth technology by consumers, especially in the mobile handset market, but there are still some doubts in the industry over the coexistence issues between the Bluetooth radio and the addition of a Wi-Fi radio into such a small space.
"This demonstration shows that when using CSR technology these concerns are no longer an issue and that CSR's BlueCore and UniFi happily coexist in situations such as music streaming or voice calls where the slightest degradation of quality would be noticeable to the consumer," he said
Four tests
The demonstrations showed:
• streaming stereo music to Bluetooth headphones whilst simultaneously browsing the internet or downloading a track;
• receiving a phone call over a Bluetooth headset while surfing the internet; and,
• simultaneous transfer of files, one over Bluetooth and the other over a Wi-Fi link.
The demonstration showed that UniFi, complete with UMA compliant 17dBm radio frequency output power, will not interfere with or be disrupted by the synchronous Bluetooth HV3 packets, providing a suitable quality of service end to end.
CSR has optimised UniFi with this usage scenario in mind, and employs all commonly used frequency / time domain coexistence schemes for other 2.4GHz wireless standards.
For consumer electronics
The UniFi-1 product family, which started sampling at the end of 2004, has also been designed specifically for easy integration into consumer electronic devices. The card features BlueCore4 ROM and UniFi-1 Portable, designed specifically for cellular phones and other pocket-sized devices.
The single band (2.4GHz) 802.11b/g device features an exceptionally small chip-scale package, measuring only 6x6 mm, which incorporates the RF, modem, baseband and hard MAC (media access controller) in a true single-chip format. The chip architecture itself, coupled with the lack of external components required, ensure that the UniFi silicon offers extremely low power consumption, a low bill of materials and superior Wi-Fi performance.
17th May 2006
