Bluetooth products are finally here. Many companies were ready at the beginning of last year with product introductions but were held back because of the move from Bluetooth 1.0 to 1.1, which helped solve interoperability issues. For example, at CBIT last year a lot of products were not interoperable and that was a big set back for the Bluetooth introductions. Today, Bluetooth is available and the market is becoming very segmented with each application needing a dedicated implementation.

It wasn't long ago that there was confusion about whether Bluetooth would be a competitor to 802.11b. Today, the debate is resolved and most industry players agree that Bluetooth and 802.11b have their own market place. Bluetooth is for short distances, such as wireless personal area networks, used by small devices like the digital camera, MP3 player, cell phone, laptop, and PDA. The 802.11b standard is for Wireless LAN products. The differences between Bluetooth and 802.11b revolve mostly around distance and data rate.

Alcatel decided to target Bluetooth and the cell phone headset market with this new product, and include an embedded stack for the headset profile developed with TTPCom. This nascent headset market will lend itself to other markets eventually, including use with PDAs. Later it is conceivable the headset could be used with a laptop to access an ADSL modem to make a voice over IP call - without a phone. The next generation headset may move toward headphones. The audio quality will move from voice to hi-fi quality, via some intermediary capability like MP3. Finally,it will move into the high-end hi-fi quality and totally different applications, including wireless headphones in combination with media systems in home cinema applications. But don't look for this product just yet, manufacturers target this market for sometime next year.

The MTC-60180 uses 2Mb Flash memory that is embedded on the die. Half of this memory is used for software from the PHY layer up to HDI, the generally accepted standard interface for Bluetooth. The press release describes one of these embedded stacks that go up to the application layer including the man-machine interface, which allows customizing the product in terms of buttons and function of the buttons. It's a self-contained software tool stack that runs on the ARM7 processor inside the chip.

Alcatel has established a long-term relationship with TTPCom for the supply of original IP blocks for the Bluetooth baseband device. They did the integration of the upper layer stack for integration into the Alcatel chip. Most of the main players have a software partner for the upper layer stack and the application software and GSM chipsets. In the Bluetooth arena many companies that are focusing on the silicon application work with software partners. Additionally, when Microsoft brings out the next Windows XP release with Bluetooth drivers, which is scheduled for June, then many software companies will write application software on the Windows platform.

Alcatel's reference design has a radio, the MT60180 baseband, and a battery management chip. The battery management chip makes the reference design unique, containing a chip to protect the typical lithium ion battery. Usually this is attached to the battery itself, but Alcatel uses a chip that performs this function and can be integrated in the reference design. So, it can work with very small batteries that don't have built-in external protection. The Alcatel chip provides a constant I, V curve. This kind of charging mechanism usually requires external electronics. Typically, the mechanism is placed at the charger site, which increases the cost. Alcatel decided to include all these charging components in the battery management kit. The driver of the battery management is done by the microprocessor on the Bluetooth baseband, which runs the charging algorithms and the remaining battery charge measurements. By including the parts, Alcatel avoids expensive components at the charging site and can work with very low cost chargers on the market. And that also reduces the overall bill of materials.

More information can be found at: www.alcatel.com/microelectronics. The data sheet was not available at the time of this review but will be located under the documentation category.