RF Micro Devices has announced the development of a new system-on-a-chip Bluetooth chip, the SiW4000, supporting Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) transmission. EDR Bluetooth is an emerging standard for the next generation Bluetooth radios, supporting up to three times faster data transmission as the current Bluetooth 1.2 specification. Most shipping products today use Bluetooth 1.1.

RF Micro Devices claims that SiW4000 consumes less than a third the power of current Bluetooth products while still tripling the throughput. It also says that the integrated design saves both production costs for the chip as well as space- and cost- for integrating the chip into a handheld or mobile phone. It is also designed to play nice with nearby 802.11 Wi-Fi systems, which operate the same 2.4 GHz band. RF Micro Devices expects samples of the new chip to be available to manufacturers in early 2005.


Source : InfoSyncWorld