Broadcom has put its weight behind a proposal to create a high speed version of Bluetooth wireless downloads for multimedia products like the iPod by combining it with 100Mbit/s WiFi technology.
“Bluetooth is not going away but may be it will morph into different things,” Craig Ochikubo, v-p and general manager 
of Broadcom's wireless personal area networking business, told EW this week in London.
Broadcom, which has already integrated separate WiFi and Bluetooth transceivers on one chip, is a strong advocate of the Bluetooth-WiFi approach as the most practical route to higher data rates for Bluetooth in the 
short term.
Bluetooth is used in half of all mobile phones but if the short-range wireless communications technology is to significantly broaden its appeal beyond that of a clever wireless headset technology then the belief is it must support higher data rates.
Practically moving multimedia files such as video and audio will require data rates well in excess of the 1-2Mbit/s of Bluetooth 2.0.
The original plan for giving Bluetooth a speed boost was to morph it into a version of the UWB, or ultra wideband, standard which offers 400Mbit/s data rates.
But there are issues - regulatory and system complexity - which are slowing the deployment of UWB, which needs new licensed frequency bands between 3-10GHz.
“We are not dismissing UWB in the longer term,” said Ochikubo. “But Bluetooth-WiFi utilises the higher data rate which is already in the market. It is already in PCs and now it is moving into smartphones, so Bluetooth would be adopting a technology which is being deployed today,” said Ochikubo.
This may not give developers of wireless interfaces for cameras and TVs the 400Mbit/s data rates of UWB, but with 802.11n the practical data rates are approaching 100Mbit/s.
Another issue in the mobile market is the reluctance of handset manufacturers to add yet another radio system, which is what UWB would require, to what they already have which already includes the 2.4GHz radio needed for Bluetooth-WiFi.
With the Bluetooth SIG looking seriously at Bluetooth-WiFi and with the likes of Broadcom strongly in favour of the idea it seems like a runner. So realistically when will it happen?
“We expect an interoperability specification to be ratified sometime in mid-2009 and I would expect to see the first integrated chips in the 12 months following that,” said Ochikubo.
See also: Electronics Weekly's Focus on Wireless, a roundup of content related to wireless communications.