Ultra-low power Bluetooth silicon outpaces standard speed

CSR unveils its Ultra Low Power (ULP) Bluetooth silicon that consumes 10x less power than standard Bluetooth when connected. The ULP Bluetooth consists of two ICs successfully transferring ULP Bluetooth data packets 50x faster than standard Bluetooth, meaning that the devices were consuming as little as 1/50th of the power.



In addition, the ULP devices used 1/10th the power required by standard Bluetooth. These devices are “dual-mode” because they support both Bluetooth 2.1 and ULP Bluetooth radios. As a complementary Bluetooth technology, the device can be used to transfer simple data sets between compact devices and can run for up to 10 years on one button cell battery.

The ULP Bluetooth technology has very low overheads, which makes it much faster to connect devices; this means much less power is consumed. End-products based on ULP Bluetooth will therefore have battery standby times measured in years, not just days or weeks.

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 and sends its very short burst of data and then switches off again. This allows the ULP Bluetooth to achieve data transfer 50x faster than standard Bluetooth.