A high speed Bluetooth design which runs on a tenth of the power of existing chip technology has been demonstated by silicon supplier CSR.

Cambridge-based CSR demonstrated the Ultra Low Power (ULP) Bluetooth silicon at the Continua Health Alliance medical conference in Luxembourg. Medical body monitors is seen as an application for the lower power wireless technology.

The hope is that ULP Bluetooth, also known by the Wibree name, can be used to transfer simple data sets between compact devices and can run for up to ten years on one button cell battery. ULP Bluetooth was previously known as Wibree.

The demonstration consisted of two ICs transferring ULP Bluetooth data packets 50 times faster than standard Bluetooth, meaning that the devices were consuming as little as 1/50th of the power. In establishing the connection, the ULP devices used 1/10th the power required by standard Bluetooth.

"This is the first ever public demonstration of ULP Bluetooth," said Robin Heydon, CSR’s standards architect.

According to CSR, when ULP Bluetooth is used, in a wireless heart rate monitor for example, the monitor simply ‘advertises’ itself to the control/reader using just three frequencies (could be a mobile phone or watch) that then connects sends its very short burst of data and then switches off again.

CSR’s demonstration ICs employed both standard Bluetooth (v.2.1) and ULP Bluetooth radios. CSR calls these devices ‘dual-mode’ because they support both flavours of Bluetooth radio.

See also: Electronics Weekly's Focus on Bluetooth, a roundup of content related to the near-range wireless networking technology