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CSR – Changing the way the world connects

The mobile phone revolutionised the way we connected with our friends, colleagues and family. It allowed us to communicate everywhere and at all times. It also allowed us to be reached even when we would rather not be reached. We became connected to cellular networks 24 hours per day and soon even the farmers and day labourers in the fields will be negotiating their deals on mobile phones.

Bluetooth, has extended the connectivity of our mobiles, allowing us to connect wirelessly with headsets, mobiles and other Bluetooth devices. Bluetooth enables hands-free calls to be held. It allows us to transfer contact details, ring tunes and even photos between handsets and other Bluetooth equipped devices. Everybody who has used Bluetooth has probably used a CSR Bluetooth radio, and possibly two if you consider both ends of the connection.

Consumers replacing their mobiles expect more functionality without having to pay more. Mobile manufacturers are constantly in search for possibilities to add features without adding significantly to the cost. As a result mobiles continue to develop around the theme of a personal connectivity centre and recent innovations have introduced other connectivity mediums such as FM radio, Wifi and even GPS. They are all forms of wireless connectivity which CSR continues to spearhead.

FM radio is one feature that has become popular in mobiles. State of the art Bluetooth chips include an FM receiver with support for RDS radio channel data. CSR’s BlueCore 7 is the seventh generation of Bluetooth device and includes both an FM receiver and an FM transmitter. You can use your mobile to connect to the car radio, another mobile, or even your home stereo system and transmit music over FM. You will be able to listen to your music using real speakers. Integrating an FM radio and Bluetooth into a single chip is not straightforward and the engineering teams have worked hard to ensure that FM quality is not disturbed when Bluetooth is switched on.

GPS has also become a standard feature in more advanced mobiles. It’s another connectivity technology connecting the mobile device to satellites positioned to implement the GPS tracking systems.

Recently CSR and SiRF merged combining the world’s leading Bluetooth and GPS companies into a single entity. The combined company has the strongest portfolio of Bluetooth, WiFi and GPS connectivity solutions available on the market. Different GPS solutions are available from high performance chips with hardware data correlation accelerators and excellent sensitivity to lower cost alternatives suitable for budget mobiles. State of the art solutions connect also to the wealth of location data being transmitted through cellular networks and WiFi hotspots. Intelligently combining satellite, cellular and WiFi location information allows mobiles to accurately provide location services even inside shopping malls and offices. Combining location services with internet search and mapping services will allow us to find our destinations and each other faster.

Smartphones are becoming popular with their ability to connect to internet and e-mail services. Cellular networks support data connectivity everywhere through GPRS, EGPRS, CDMA and 3G WCDMA technologies. WiFi provides data connectivity in the office, at a WiFi hotspot in an airport, or even at home using your broadband access point. Smartphones include WiFi allowing users to select his most convenient connection technology depending on where he is.

The CSR 9000 is a module concept integrating Bluetooth and Wifi into the industries smallest footprint and resolving the problem of radio coexistence. WiFi based on the 802.11 b/g standards operates in the 2.4GHz radio band, the same frequency band as Bluetooth. If the designer is not careful, when you bring the WiFi and Bluetooth radios close to each other, they interfere with each other. Bluetooth and WiFi data packets become corrupted resulting in data packets having to be retransmitted. For Bluetooth this can result in clicks in the audio. WiFi, in the presence of interference drops to slower transmission rates over the air, so the time required to transmit the data packet increases. This increases the time required to send the WiFi data packets, so they take longer to reach their destination increasing further the possibility of packets being corrupted. CSR has resolved the coexistence challenge through implementation of special handshaking mechanisms ensuring that the Bluetooth and WiFi radios intelligently cooperate to avoid interfering with each other and at the same time guaranteeing maximum throughput rates.

The next evolution in Bluetooth has already been standardised in Bluetooth 3.0 and is called Bluetooth High Speed or Bluetooth HS. Bluetooth HS integrates the WiFi speed of 802.11 with the Bluetooth ease of use. Bluetooth is used to discover and connect to devices where its low power properties are ideal. For connectivity of headsets and transmission of pieces of data, Bluetooth has already proven to be more than sufficient. However, have you waited while transferring a batch of 2MByte photos over Bluetooth? With Bluetooth HS the Bluetooth connection will detect that both devices support 802.11 radios. When large data files are to be transferred, Bluetooth is used to connect the 802.11 radios and transparently transfer the data at WiFi data rates. The user only notices the increase in speed. CSR has pioneered this technical advance and Bluetooth HS is now supported with the CSR9000 Bluetooth-WiFi modules.

CSR continues to evolve connectivity technologies and recently CSR demonstrated a Bluetooth low energy product. This fascinating technology will run for years on a single cell battery, and therefore has many potential applications, from heart-rate monitors, to remote controls and vehicle diagnosis systems. Also, given that Bluetooth low energy is closely-related to the core Bluetooth spec, it can be integrated into products at a very low additional cost.

A common complaint about Bluetooth is the initial pairing procedure when you connect to a new Bluetooth device. Why should you enter a pin code to connect to your own headset? There has been much talk of using Near Field Communications (NFC) chips in conjunction with Bluetooth in order to simplify device pairing. Using NFC, two devices could simply be brought close to each other in order to pair. However CSR has even come up with a lower-cost Bluetooth-based alternative that makes the most of existing Bluetooth silicon. CSR’s Proximity Pairing, featured in the Bluetooth BC6100 audio headset range, uses measurements of signal strength in Bluetooth radios to effect pairing, with no need to pay for NFC silicon. For existing Bluetooth devices, pairing remains a necessity but future headsets and other devices will support Proximity Pairing reducing the complexity for everybody.

CSR continues to evolve its connectivity centre solutions for Bluetooth, FM, WiFi, GPS and other standards, enabling these technologies to be easily integrated into mobiles, stereo headsets, car kits, mp3 players, cameras, health care devices, gaming consoles, portable navigation devices, laptops, desktops, notebooks, mice, keyboards, joysticks and other products still to be dreamt of.
CSR is truly changing the way the world connects.

John Mudie
General Manager – CSR India

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