WAYNE, N.J. — The Bluetooth Special Interest Group said Wednesday (Nov. 5) it has formally approved version 1.2 of the Bluetooth core specification. Meanwhile, silicon vendors RF Micro Devices and SiliconWave are releasing a jointly developed CMOS radio IC.
The version 1.2 specification brings some enhancements to the Bluetooth market. The biggest, and probably most talked about, is adaptive frequency hopping, which allows Bluetooth systems to adapt their hop patterns on the fly to avoid interfering with 802.11 and other 2.4 GHz wireless systems.
The Bluetooth SIG said the updated specification also provides support for enhanced voice processing and faster connection setup. As promised, the new specification will be backward compatible with existing Bluetooth 1.0 devices.
To help designers implement the technology, RF Micro Devices and SiliconWave have jointly developed the UltimateBlue single-chip Bluetooth IC. This CMOS IC includes both the RF and baseband processing portions of a Bluetooth radio and delivers features described in the version 1.2 specification such as frequency hopping.
The UltimateBlue IC employs a direct-conversion receiver architecture and sports an on-chip RF matching network. The RF section of the chip also supports hardware-based automatic gain control capabilities, thus allowing the chip to dynamically adjust the chip's receiver for optimal performance.
On the baseband side, the chip includes a 32-bit ARM7TDMI processor. It also includes on-chip ROM storage and a dynamic software path capability.
The UltimateBlue IC comes in a 96-pin VFBGA package that measures 6 by 6 mm. RF Micro Devices will serve as the main supplier to customers.
According to the Bluetooth SIG, the first products implementing technology specified in version 1.2 will begin shipping in the first quarter of 2004. Mass volumes are expected over the next 12 to 18 months.
