Disruptive Technologies, Education and Some Social Issues » Wibree

Wibree Demo by CSR

Kenney Jacob — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:46:53 +0000

Wibree, now known as Ultra Low Power Bluetooth saw its first working demo today. CSR, the chip manufacturer successfully demonstrated data transfer between 2 dual mode bluetooth chips. The venue was a medical conference in Luxembourg.

The chips will be commercially available from this year itself. I hope to see a lot of cell phones are wrist watches with wibree technology in the market. This would pave way to a whole new set of products are services.

Wibree is 50 times faster than Bluetooth and because of that reason itself, the power consumption drops. Also the protocol has been stripped down of unnecessary overheads and tailor made to transfer short bursts of data. A single cell battery is expected to give a wibree product a running time of 10 years.Similar Posts:

Wibree is now ULP Bluetooth

Kenney Jacob — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 05:35:35 +0000

Wibree has been renamed to ULP Bluetooth, ie Ultra Low Power Bluetooth. This change in name happened after the adoption of the technology by Bluetooth SIG. From now on this short range wireless communication protocol will be a part of the bluetooth specifications.

The advantage of this adoption is the faster integration with existing bluetooth specs and products. We are expecting to see the first wibree products in an year.Similar Posts:

Bluetooth Vs Wibree

Kenney Jacob — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 08:33:54 +0000

Bluetooth uses a frequency hopping technology to avoid interference from other devices operating in the same frequency. Wibree does not use frequency hopping.

Bluetooth uses fixed packet length. This increases power usage as unnecessary transmission occurs. Wibree has a variable packet length and transmits only when necessary.

Bluetooth drains your cellphone battery as it needs quite a lot of power to remain active. Wibree aims to survive for a full year on a button sized battery.
In contrast to bluetooth, wibree goes into sleep mode when not transmitting. In sleep mode the radio will be off and will save a lot of power. Wibree devices wake up only when they want to transmit.

The major usage difference between wibree and bluetooth is the traffic characteristics. Bluetooth is useful when transferring files, using the handsfree etc where the volume of data that needs to to transfered is considerable.

Wibree is used in areas where only short bursts of data needs to be transmitted. Remotes, sensor data etc.Similar Posts:

Wibree Vs Zigbee

Kenney Jacob — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 12:23:10 +0000

Wibree is a PAN (Personal Area Networking) technology

Zigbee is a mesh networking technology

Wibree is more power efficient

Zigbee has got more range

Wibree’s data transfer rate is 1 Mbps

Zigbees Data transfer rate is 250 Kbps

Wibree has got a star topology

Zigbee has got a mesh topology

Wibree uses bluetooth radio and can co-exist with bluetooth

Zigbee needs its own special radio and has got no relationship with bluetoothSimilar Posts:

Wibree is best suited for my TV remote

Kenney Jacob — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 03:09:18 +0000

Wibree technology has got special features to decrease the battery usage. The benchmark is to run a wibree device on coin sized battery for an year without any recharge. The technology is such that the device will go in to sleep mode when not in use to save battery. The usage matches a remote as it is not used continuously. The handset powers up only when a button is pressed.

The receiving end (TV) is AC powered. So the receiver section can be made very powerful even to detect the most feeble signal coming from the remote. Better and bigger antenna designs can be used on the TV to improve the signal reception.
Moreover I can use my wibree mobile phone to control my TV by installing an additional software. Even a Wibree watch can be used for the same purpose, but with a lesser range.

When compared to IRDA, wibree remotes can support more complex features like a two way communication, pre-programming certain channel settings etc.Similar Posts:

Wibree – The Smart Business Idea

Kenney Jacob — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 07:15:04 +0000

Nokia came up with the wibree idea and quite tactfully they merged with the bluetooth SIG. Their site even suggests some product ideas, like watch, health monitor and some really fancy cool gadgets.

The initial impression was that wibree will eliminate bluetooth from the market. But with the merger of wibree with the bluetooth SIG, a smart business idea, or rather a conspiracy emerges. Wibree is not going to be a bluetooth killer, instead it will kill every other sensor network technology like zigbee and sunspot.

The advantages of wibree is that it has got more power efficiency and 4 times data transfer capacity. But Zigbee has got more range, and built in mesh networking capabilities.

But Wibree shoots down all its competition by being compatible to bluetooth which is an accepted technology. Both uses the same radio and a bluetooth device can be upgraded by a small firmware change.

Nokia is clever enough to see the opportunity, billions of phones and other devices exist worldwide with bluetooth technology. Everyone of us carries a bluetooth phone. The world is bluetooth enabled. Nokia made a technology that is sensor network ready, upon the existing bluetooth system.

This beautiful business idea is gonna kill every other sensor network technology for sure.

To be thinking positive, wibree and bluetooth will transform the way devices exchange information. Personal areas networking will get a real boost from the wibree technology.Similar Posts:

Wibree wrist watch, mobile phone and hands free

Kenney Jacob — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 11:39:39 +0000

A cool new wibree product will be released with the launch of wibree devices. It will be a wibree enabled wrist watch, bluetooth and wibree enabled mobile phone and bluetooth hands free.

With this product you will be come totally hands free. When a call comes the mobile will ring, but you dont have to take the mobile from your pocket to know who is calling. The callers name and number will be scrolling on your wrist watch. Your mobile phone will send the data to your wibree enabled wrist watch.

Also your bluetooth handsfree will be standing by for your command to pick the call. If you press a button on your watch or your hands free the call will be answered and you can talk freely.

The same technology is expected to replace in-car hands free systems also.Similar Posts:

Wibree – Stack

Kenney Jacob — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 02:25:39 +0000

This is the wibree stack.

Image taken from wibree website.Similar Posts:

Bluetooth and Wibree CoExistance

Kenney Jacob — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 01:55:24 +0000

Wibree is known as Ultra low power bluetooth technology, with its adoption by the bluetooth SIG. Its hardware implementation has a stand alone wibree chip and a dual mode chip which has wibree and bluetooth technologies in it.

The single mode devices will be the low power devices like the remote control handset and the sensor that will be used to transmit a patients vital signals wirelessley. The dual more chipset will be used in devices like mobile phone and the receiver section of the TV remote control.

In dual mode the bluetooth RF part will be shared between bluetooth and wibree. Wibree’s capabilities are built into its link layer. Link layer has a low power advertisement service, simple device discovery and point to multipoint data transfer.

The Link layer can schedule wibree packets in between bluetooth packets.Similar Posts:

Wibree implementation – Low power usage

Kenney Jacob — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 01:57:59 +0000

Wibree achieves the low power usage by sleeping whenever its not transmitting. The main usage scenarios of wibree are such that only very little data is transmitted and that too once in a while.

Think of a remote wibree remote control for your TV. The remote usage is very low compared to the idle time. Similarly a wibree sensor network will only be transferring data in small volumes and limited cycles.

The device will be sleeping whenever its not not being used. When a wibree device is required to transmit it will wake up and it will transmit on a number of advertising channels. The receiving device will then allocate a channel for the data transmission. Once the data is transferred and acknowledged the wibree device goes back to sleep again.

Wibree saves power by using low power radio, minimising the data transfer and sleeping when not transmitting. The challenge is to achieve 1 year battery life for a normal cell sized battery.Similar Posts: