Wibree Overview and Basics
- an overview, tutorial and information about the new Wibree low power
wireless standard that has been announced by Nokia
Another new short range wireless standard has recently been
announced. Called Wibree, its aim is to be an industry standard for enabling
wireless connectivity between small devices. The new Wibree technology has been
developed by the Nokia Research Centre, and it is hoped that Wibree will become
an industry wide wireless standard.
The Wibree standard offers a number of advantages:
- Ultra low peak, average & idle mode power consumption
- Ultra low cost & small size for accessories & human interface devices
(HID)
- Minimal cost & size addition to mobile phones & PCs
- Global, intuitive & secure multi-vendor interoperability
It is claimed that the new Wibree technology complements
other local wireless connectivity technologies, and only consumes a fraction of
the power. This enables it to be used in small electronics items such as button
cell powered devices where power is particularly limited. As a result it is
anticipated that Wibree will find a wide variety of uses in applications ranging
from watches, wireless keyboards, toys and sports sensors.
Although Nokia took the lead in the development of Wibree,
other companies are now involved as the aim is to make it an open standard. The
members of the group defining the specification now include: Broadcom
Corporation, CSR, Epson and Nordic Semiconductor having licensed the Wibree
technology for commercial chip implementation. In addition to this the sports
equipment manufacturer Suunto and Taiyo Yuden are contributing to the
interoperability specification in their respective areas of expertise.
Basic Wibree specification
Although some experiment and demonstrations have been undertaken at the Nokia
Research Centre to check the viability of the Wibree standard, comparatively
little has been firmed up yet. The idea is that all partners in the group will
be able to contribute to the Wibree standard and in this way it will have a wide
degree of industry acceptance.
Some items basic elements of Wibree have been defined. Wibree will operate in
the 2.4 GHz ISM band and it will have a physical layer bit rate of 1 Mbps. Even
with its very low power level it is able to support communication over distances
up to five or ten metres.
There are some further outline requirements for Wibree that
have already been laid down, although the way in which they will be implemented
has not been decided. The standard will not use frequency hopping techniques
like Bluetooth. The reason is that this technique, while very useful in reducing
interference uses more power, and one of the chief aims for Wibree is that it
will be a very low power technology.
The Wibree standard will also be designed to enable dual-mode
implementations to reuse some Bluetooth RF technology. This will also help the
standard complement Bluetooth and this is hoped to provide some early
acceptance.
Facilities will be added to Wibree to provide the equivalent
of the Bluetooth Service Discovery Protocol that prevents sending in appropriate
data to devices that are connected, i.e. audio to a printer, or data from a
keyboard to a headphone. Again, details of this are yet to be defined.
One fact that has been stated is that the transmitted data
packets will be dynamic in size, in comparison with Bluetooth packets that have
a defined fixed length. By transmitting only as much data as is needed power
will be saved.
Wibree summary
As the first announcement about Wibree was only made in October 2006, and few
details have been defined, it will take some time for the work to be completed.
Yet despite this it is anticipated that the first releases of the specification
will be available by end of the second quarter of 2007, and devices late in the
year. It will be interesting to see how Wibree is accepted by the market and
whether it takes off in the way Nokia hopes.
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