The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) announced the formal adoption of its next generation Bluetooth v3.0 + HS wireless connectivity technology on April 21, 2009, at the SIG Annual All-Hands meeting in Tokyo. Today, chip manufacturers Atheros, Broadcom and CSR announced products based on the new high speed spec.
Atheros has received Bluetooth certification for its AR3011 Bluetooth chip for PC implementations, host stack, and 802.11 a/g/n solutions to support the High-Speed 802.11AMP. Atheros says it will enable its customers to participate in the first wave of Bluetooth 3.0-based products expected in early 2010.
The new specification enables a wide array of applications for Bluetooth by leveraging advantages of 802.11 – greater bandwidth and energy efficiency. Bluetooth 3.0 + HS supports wireless docking for PCs, and video and multimedia content sharing and synching between devices including handsets, PCs, and gaming and other handheld products. Additionally, it enhances existing Bluetooth applications by providing the same, familiar user experience, only much faster.
Broadcom says their new chip and software combo conform to the newly ratified Bluetooth v3.0 + HS specification announced just this week. It provides a 24 Mbps turbo boost to Bluetooth.
Broadcom says its leading Bluetooth combo chip technology and associated BTE software have been qualified as compliant with the ratified Bluetooth v3.0 + HS (high speed) specification. The new standard significantly expands the capabilities of Bluetooth wireless technology in multimedia smartphones, netbooks and other devices by enabling the transmission of large files via Bluetooth profiles at speeds up to 24 Megabits per second (Mbps), or a 10 times increase in speed over the previous Bluetooth v2.1 + EDR (enhanced data rate) standard.
The company claims their InConcert® BCM4325 Bluetooth + Wi-Fi® + FM combo chip solution is the first product in the industry to achieve qualification.
Bluetooth products now qualified as compliant with the v3.0 + HS specification include the Broadcom® BCM4325 802.11b/g combo chip solution that combines Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and FM radio functionality on a single-chip design. Broadcom’s popular BTE software, the core Bluetooth software stack on which all Broadcom Bluetooth software is based, has also been qualified as compliant with the new v3.0 + HS standard.
In addition to enabling 10 times the transmission speed over previous Bluetooth specifications, v3.0 + HS provides for remote control applications featuring Unicast Connectionless Data (UCD) with lower power and reduced latency, making Bluetooth’s radio technology ideally suited for consumer electronics remote control applications.
Cambridge Silicon Radio also announced that its Synergy wireless systems software is qualified for Bluetooth v3.0. CSR’s recently launched products, including the CSR9000, which offers Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth low energy, GPS and FM Rx/Tx. As the software behind such a comprehensive product, CSR’s Synergy not only complies to the Bluetooth v3.0 spec and supports all Wi-Fi variants, but also offers support for additional technologies such as Bluetooth low energy, FM and GPS.
Four new Bluetooth low energy chips were also announced at the same All Hands Meeting where Bluetooth 3.0 was announced. The new chips are from Cambridge Silicon Radio, Nordic Semiconductor, and Texas Instruments, with TI also announcing a dual-mode chipset.
Single-mode chips will target applications requiring low power consumption and small size, such as watches, healthcare devices, toys, and so on. Dual-mode chips will serve in mobile phones and PCs.
