CSR, the leading supplier of Bluetooth chips, demoed their Bluetooth ULP chip today at the Continua Health Alliance medical conference in Luxemborg. The chip is a dual-mode Bluetooth chip, which can operate in the Ultra-Low Power (ULP) mode as well as the regular v2.1 Bluetooth standard. This follows TI’s announcement a few months ago, at CTIA 2008, of their own entry to the Bluetooth ULP market. TI’s chip, the Navilink 6.0, combines assisted GPS, FM radio, as well as the dual-mode Bluetooth transceiver.
For those who is not familiar with Bluetooth ULP, the standard was initially named WiBree, and was solely sponsored by Nokia. On July 2008, the Bluetooth SIG, the standard body responsible for maintaining the Bluetooth standard, agrees to incorporate Wibree into the Bluetooth standard under the banner Bluetooth ULP. Nokia positioned WiBree technology as a complement to Bluetooth, where WiBree can furnish application where low power comes first, and data rate second.
It is interesting to note, whereas TI chose to make the splash in a big wireless conference like the CTIA, CSR chose to unveil their product in a medical conference. This is not surprising since health-related gadgets, like a pedometer or a heart-rate monitor have been the poster-child for WiBree.
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