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I recently had a chance to spend some time in the wireless mecca of San Diego; I was there to participate in an Ultra Low Power Wireless event hosted by Nordic Semiconductor. Nordic defines ultra-low power as those devices that can run on a coin cell battery for at least a year, and its 2.4 Gigahertz wireless products offer the perfect range and power for innovative personal area network (PAN) applications. The company has a strong market share in wireless mice and other computer peripherals, and sees strong growth in remote controls with two-way communication.

Nordic also foresees a burgeoning market for mobile medical monitoring and body-area networks. For example, the company’s transceivers are used in the ActiHeatlh BodyLAN monitoring system from FitSense that uses sensors to measure such parameters as caloric burn and activity duration and interfaces with health devices like scales and blood pressure monitors.

One such really cool “sportainment” applications was presented by Nike’s Aaron Weast, who explained that Nike has partnered with Apple on the “ Nike + iPod “ system that wirelessly pairs an in-shoe piezoelectric sensor with a plug-in receiver for the iPod Nano. Then, a Web-based interface allows the runner to set training programs and goals and then records running distance, time and pace on the iPod while giving the runner real-time information via audio output (including Lance Armstrong’s encouraging voice).

While Nordic-based systems have up until now been proprietary, moving forward the company is working with the Bluetooth SIG on its new ultra-low power standard—the evolution of the Wibree standard—and so the next generation of products will link into an open architecture, able to communicate to cell phones or other Bluetooth devices. ULP Bluetooth will be a 2.4 GHz technology designed for applications where traditional Bluetooth is not viable because of power consumption requirements. The technology will allow dual-mode operation, sharing a radio with Bluetooth at the link layer. While Nordic’s proprietary ULP chips typically use one-tenth the power of Bluetooth, even in dual-mode, a ULP Bluetooth wireless device will use approximately 75% of the power consumption compared to traditional Bluetooth. The first products are not expected to hit the market until 2010.

While in San Diego, I also had the chance to call on some of the myriad wireless companies there. Qualcomm’s Manjit Gili reviewed with me the tremendous processing power and integration found in the Snapdragon processor, at the heart of which is the Scorpion, a Qualcomm-optimized version of the ARM Cortex which clocks in at 1 GHz. This moves Qualcomm upstream into the CPU business for mobile Internet devices and mobile computing, taking advantage of the processing power to do higher quality video and other tasks—to give mobile users “a true Internet experience,” says Gili. Another key Qualcomm advantage, says Gili, is the low power consumption, with the CPU running at 500 mW.

Further exploring the Qualcomm chip roadmap, Alex Katouzian, vice president of product management, explained the current lineup of QSC integrated processors covering the low-(QSC6270), mid- (QSC6295), and high-end phones (QSC7230, with dual-core processors). The next step for Qualcomm is to extend software offerings—to include CODECs integrated with software and bundled with the chip set. Katouzian says this will allow phone developers to move a level higher and to concentrate on middleware integration—and to focus on the key issues of user interface and hardware design that differentiates the phone while getting to market at an ever-faster pace.

I also had a chance to visit Ethertronics and talk to Rick Segil about the impact of antennae technology. With the prevalence of integrated single-chip solutions like those from Qualcomm, the antennae becomes one of the items that is “tweaked” in an iterative process to get maximum performance out of the phones. In some cases, says Segil, with so many complete subsystems coming to the phone OEM, the antennae is sometimes the only thing that is custom to a given phone design. Design rules in smaller, thinner phones mean that the “keep out” area for antennas continues to shrink while performance demands increase. Knowing the science of antennae design becomes ever-more important. “Maybe antennas will finally get some respect,” Segil says.

Speaking of putting wireless into challenging designs, I also sat down with Novatel CEO Brad Weinert to talk about the company’s strong track record in overcoming RF design challenges and adding wireless data connectivity in laptops and other OEM products. The company has built its business in understanding how to integrate wireless into products that present a challenging environment, and also to provide robust tools and techniques to allow OEMs to integrate RF in such environments. Weinert agrees that the challenges of incorporating RF into devices are getting tougher all the time, and notes that RF engineers are in great demand. “They can basically name their price right now,” he says.