Bluetooth continues its march to dominate the internet of things, driven by its huge existing installed base and the enthusiastic uptake of its LE (Low Energy) specification. Its latest foray is into the already overcrowded area of wireless charging, where hopes of a single standard were raised recently when Qualcomm joined all three of the competing would-be standards groups. Now the Bluetooth SIG (Special Interest Group) may add another option to the mix.
The organization, which controls the Bluetooth standards, has announced a formal partnership with one of the three groups, the Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP). The aim is not just to promote that body’s wireless charging approach, but to make the functionality smarter by communicating over Bluetooth.
The SIG said in a statement: ‘As a first step, the Bluetooth SIG has issued a Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) to the A4WP for adoption in its baseline system specification (BSS). The A4WP BSS utilizes the Bluetooth Smart radio standard to carry the session management and power control between an A4WP charging station and an A4WP-certified device such as a smartphone.’
Benefits would include faster charging, while users could be given control over the process, for instance by prioritizing the charging of one device over another, when they are all on the same mat. This is because A4WP chargers will be communicating with devices via Bluetooth Smart (the brand name for Bluetooth LE), which will carry session management and power control data. While wireless charging platforms by themselves just transmit electricity into devices through space or other objects, adding Bluetooth Smart to chargers will provide a communication channel that many mobile devices are already equipped to use, and which can add intelligence such as recognizing and prioritizing individual handsets.
The day before the SIG’s announcement, A4WP founder Qualcomm had announced that it would join the rival PMA (PowerMatters Alliance), having also signed up to the WPC (Wireless Power Consortium) the week before. This sees the chip giant taking the initiative in unifying the three approaches and, in the process, grabbing the steering wheel for the whole segment. A mutually agreed platform, drawing on the advantages of all three existing technologies, could then be implemented in Bluetooth 4.0 and given the weight of the SIG’s wider market presence, and a combined vendor sign-up.
Also in the Bluetooth LE camp, Silicon Vision – a UK fabless semiconductor design house which focuses entirely on RF silicon – has partnered with India IT consulting group Mindtree to offer an intellectual property solution for wireless personal area networks, which could drive Bluetooth LTE into all kinds of ‘things’, probably starting with home routers and gateways.
The two companies have integrated Silicon Vision’s RF PHY intellectual property for BLE with Mindtree’s baseband and low-footprint protocol stack, in a way that complies with the Bluetooth 4.0 standards but claims to reduce power consumption. They are eyeing internet of things applications which, in future, could see 100 nodes in a home, all talking to one another ‘ which will require chips that cost less than $1 and batteries that last the equipment’s lifetime. Bluetooth, as compared to other WPAN standards like ZigBee and Z-Wave, has advantages in the former area because of its massive scale, which leads to very low cost per chip.
BLE is being promoted under the Bluetooth Smart label, initially at low hanging fruit segments like sports and fitness. Analysts say it will be present in 35% of all wireless sports and fitness monitoring devices shipped during 2013 and in over 70% by 2018.