TI Demonstrates Coin Cell Based Low Energy Bluetooth Wireless Technology

Bluetooth is one of the most common wireless technologies being deployed in mobile devices for short distance communication. While it stands a great advantage in terms of relatively low power consumption as compared to other longer distance communication protocols, but some manufacturers still see the needs to develop an even lower energy Bluetooth technology to make the technology even more popular in consumer electronics products. Just recently, TI (Texas Instruments) has planned to demonstrate its world’s first low energy Bluetooth technology that can be based on coin battery cell during a conference held in Munich, Germany.

The coin battery cell Bluetooth technology will be leveraged on TI next generation thermally efficient CC2540 SOC (System-on-chip) that can operate in both single and dual-mode, making it fully compatible with next generation low energy Bluetooth devices while still backward compatible with existing legacy Bluetooth enabled devices at the same time. Being designed in 6mm X 6mm package, it integrates all the necessary host controllers with an on-package flash memory for firmware and data storage so that the whole system design can be even shrunk down to compact foot print. Impressingly, all these can be powered purely by coin battery cells for years without the need of recharging which is particularly useful for tiny lightweight Bluetooth enabled devices in concealed casing. Besides existing mobile phones market, there are some new usage models including fitness, sports, medical that should be able to benefit from the low energy Bluetooth technology from now onwards.

No pricing information yet, CC2540 will be available by early 2010 and in order to simplify board’s design, TI has manufactured it so that the silicon will be pin-compatible with existing CC2530 ZigBee controller as a direct drop in replacement for faster TTM (Time-to-Market).