Wibree: companion for Bluetooth.
Bluetooth is optimized for voice transfer, notes Jani Tierala of the Nokia Research Center in Helsinki. However, some applications need the opposite: small data transfer at infrequent intervals. This is why Nokia is introducing an alternative to Bluetooth, called Wibree. The standard, being developed by an informal group of companies, will be cheap and have low power requirements, suitable for small devices (jewelry, watches, toys, sensors) but will have a range of 10 meters with 1mbps transfer rates. The lower-power requirements are particularly interesting as the technology is expected to have very low power drain when on, but idle.
The technology is looking for a formal association so that a specification can be completed at some point in 2007.
Reported in eWeek, Computer Weekly, Computing, The Register.
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