A Nokia Wibree PAN Follow-Up ...
• The Wibree website ...
wibree.com
• A Wibree FAQ
wibree.com
• The Original Nokia Wibree Press Release
wibree.com
Four articles expressing contrasting points of view that followed the above announcement below ...
>> Confusion Regarding Wibree
Mike Foley
Bluetooth Sig
October 3, 2006
tinyurl.com
Today there has been a great deal of conversation around a technology introduced by Nokia named Wibree. Wibree focuses upon ultra low power applications. In the coverage that I have read regarding Wibree, there appears to be some confusion regarding its target applications and how it relates to Bluetooth wireless technology. It s important to note that Wibree isn t an alternative for the majority of Bluetooth use cases including the voice, printing, transfer and music scenarios. As the Nokia press release states, they are focused on sensor applications like a watch. Like most technologies there is some overlap in use cases. Between Wibree and Bluetooth technologies the overlap most likely occurs in the input devices mentioned in the announcement.
One important fact that doesn t seem to be mentioned is that in the complex device such as a mobile phone, Wibree is built upon Bluetooth wireless technology. Wibree consists of a small extension to a standard Bluetooth radio. As such, Wibree has the potential to enhance Bluetooth use cases in the phone by bringing sensor type devices into the fold.
Ultra low power applications are important to many Bluetooth SIG members; not just Nokia. (For example, see the Fossil® caller ID watch ...
tinyurl.com
To enable ultra low power applications in a Bluetooth system, the Bluetooth SIG is taking the same approach we did with the high-speed channel. We are evaluating existing and new technology in the industry as well as significant enhancements on the Bluetooth technology roadmap. As this evaluation continues there is the potential for additional partnerships to enable the ultra low power applications. ###
>> Why, Why, Wibree?
Is Nokia's new wireless standard really mature enough?
Bill Ray
The Register
6th October 2006
theregister.co.uk
Analysis: We're not short of wireless standards these days, so quite why Nokia felt the need to launch another one on Tuesday is open to question.
Wibree is a low-power option for Bluetooth, at least that's how it's being pitched by Nokia. But in reality there seems little similarity between the two. Wibree will use the same antenna and frequency (the increasingly crowded 2.4GHz band), but other than that the work has been to ensure that it will happily co-exist with Bluetooth, not be compatible with it.
The Bluetooth SIG said it has been in discussions with Nokia about incorporating Wibree into its standard, but that discussions were still proceeding - which is unsurprising given the lack of details yet available on Wibree.
Bluetooth works because it incorporates a couple of really useful technologies, which Wibree will struggle to emulate.
The first of these is the comprehensive frequency hopping which Bluetooth devices do when communicating. Interference in one part of the 2.4GHz band will have little or no impact as Bluetooth devices leap around, unlike their becalmed Wi-Fi cousins. This hopping does consume some power, so Wibree won't use it, but will instead do something very clever indeed; the details of which are not yet available.
Bluetooth devices can also interrogate each other to ask about capabilities and functions. This is known as the Service Discovery Protocol and prevents you sending documents to your headset or routing a phone call to your printer. Again, Wibree will have something very clever to replace this, but we don't know what yet.
We do know that Wibree packets will be dynamic in size, unlike the fixed-length Bluetooth packets, so there is some power-saving there if small amounts of data are being sent. We also know that Nokia has developed prototypes to test parts of the technology, and that we should have the full standard some time towards the middle of next year.
This looks pretty poor in comparison to some of the other short range wireless technologies on the market, such as Zigbee and Z-Wave, both of which are established with hardware in production.
Neither standard feels they have much to fear from Wibree. In a statement, the Zigbee Alliance said: "We can only surmise that this is simply a proprietary solution masked as some type of industry driven push."
A representative of Zensys (owners of Z-Wave) was equally taciturn: "It seems like a marketing spec, they have said nothing which would worry me".
So, is there room for another wireless standard? Nokia certainly thinks so, and says that while Zigbee and Z-Wave are aimed at home automation and industrial markets, Wibree has a different focus.
Quite what that focus is isn't clear. Nokia keeps citing the connected watches and shoes, as well as keyboards and mice, as its target market. But it seems unlikely that those constitute enough of a business to justify their own wireless standard. Most wireless mice and keyboards use proprietary protocols, but where a standard is needed then Bluetooth seems to do OK. Squeezing their market down to watches and shoes surely makes it insignificant, and ironic, as sales of watches are dropping because people use their phones to tell the time.
So we are left with a half-finished standard, addressing a tiny market which might not even exist, and the question of why Nokia chose to announce it now. Surely it would have been better to wait until the standard was completed, at least in draft form?
It seems Nokia is not entirely unaware of the challenges facing Wibree. It tells us the reason for the announcement was to allow other companies to sign up early, something Nokia will be urgently hoping some of them will do. ® ###
>> Wibree Will Kill Zigbee
Long live Bluetooth
Tony Dennis
The Inquirer
07 October 2006
theinquirer.net
The Sudden announcement last week of yet another wireless cable replacement technology – this one called Wibree, has taken many industry pundits by surprise. Bluetooth's position is far less threatened by Wibree than many observers believe.
The main loser in this particular battle, according to Nick Hunn of Bluetooth specialist, Ezurio, will be another wireless technology with a silly name, ZigBee.
ZigBee has many supporters including Johnson Controls, LG, Mitsubishi, Motorola, NEC, Philips, Samsung, and Siemens. ZigBee's objective is to provide 'wireless control that simply works'.
Both Wibree and ZigBee are intended to provide really low powered wireless connexions so we could be talking about battery life in terms of years rather than hours. However, ZigBee is re-inventing the wheel with its requirement for a compliant radio chip and a hub/router.
Wibree, by contrast, uses the existing hardware provided by Bluetooth such as the radio (it runs at 2.4 GHz) and the antennae. So it will be dead simple to build support for both Wibree and Bluetooth into regular mobile phones.
The beauty of this approach, Hunn argues, is that millions of regular mobile phones will be able to act as the 'router' providing Wibree equipped sensors with the link to the internet via 3G or even GPRS (2.5G).
If you look at Wibree's backers - Broadcom, CSR, Epson, Nokia and Nordic Semiconductor – you've got all the core expertise required to finish the specs for Wibree.
Since Wibree is intended to 'interlace' seamlessly with Bluetooth, it may just eventually form part of the regular Bluetooth specifications.
And the ability for handset vendors to easily offer support for Wibree and Bluetooth together will drive more handsets to support Bluetooth rather than less.
The first Wibree products won't be available probably until Q4 2007, Hunn estimated. Which begs the question – why did Nokia release news of Wibree now, rather than wait for the specs to be finished?
It probably wanted to nip a rival technology in the bud and the INQ's money is on ZigBee as the intended victim.
Incidentally, even the Wibree web site doesn't even give a clue as to where the silly name came from. µ ###
>> Nokia's Wibree vs Bluetooth as PAN of Choice
T1 Rex
October 04, 2006
t1rex.blogspot.com
Nokia has launched a consortium to promote yet another wireless transmission standard they call Wibree.
Wibree? Why not. This isn't an example of a big manufacturer looking to establish a proprietary standard so they can hog the market for lower power wireless devices. This initiative is an open standard for a new low power PAN or Personal Area Network.
But, wait a second. Doesn't Bluetooth fill that niche? It does now, but there are good reasons for yet another standard. Nokia's incentive for going back to the drawing board is to develop radio chip sets that use an order of magnitude less power than Bluetooth while retaining a 15 to 30 foot operating range and a data rate of 1 Mbps in the 2.4 GHz ISM band. Those were the original Bluetooth specs, although Bluetooth 2.0 bumps up the bandwidth to 3 Mbps.
Nokia believes the low power consumption will enable applications that use the small button type batteries to gain wireless access. These would be things like digital watches, toys and sports sensors. Perhaps this will also include in-the-ear headsets much like the invisible hearing aids. Who knows, maybe a combination hearing aid / wireless headset will be a hit with the legions of rock music deafened baby boomers now addicted to their cell phones.
Does Nokia really have the hubris to think they are going to blow away the billions of Bluetooth devices deployed or in the pipeline? I don't think so. In fact, Nokia is suggesting a dual-mode chip that will support both Bluetooth and Wibree. This is similar to the way that WiFi chipsets support both B and G standards. Technology advances generally start off including both old and new standards, at least for awhile and sometimes forever. Consider that some new personal computers still offer parallel printer ports, floppy disk drives and PS2 keyboard & mouse connectors, in addition to DVD, CD-ROM, USB, and FireWire.
Another interesting feature of the Wibree link layer specification is a scheduling mechanism that transmits Wibree traffic in-between Bluetooth transmissions. This makes it even more likely that the dual-mode radio chips are going to proliferate, certainly in Nokia products. Other features of the proposed standard include encryption, ultra low power standby operation, and simple device discovery. Initial user profiles will include sensor, human interface device (HID) and watch.
Nokia expects to have their commercial version of the Wibree interoperability specification available during the second quarter of 2007. They've already got no less than Epson on-board, along with Nordic Semiconductor, CSR and Broadcom Corporation.
The HID human interface emphasis seems particularly interesting. Sports watches that take your pulse and blood pressure and running shoes that track your pace and distance seem like only a start. Perhaps soon you'll not only be able to track your kids whereabouts by cell phone, but also know what's going on using a camera and microphone in their watch and how they are doing physically by biometric sensors. On the other end of the age spectrum, this technology could also be valuable for elder care. A more sinister application would be EEG sensors monitored through a corporate Wireless network, so the boss would know who's REALLY sleeping during those endless staff meetings. ###
- Eric - |
