Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Magentic Wireless Technology Competing With Bluetooth Headsets

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2003 05:54:24 -0400

Magentic Wireless Technology Competing With Bluetooth Headsets
Contributed by mmasnick on Mon, Oct 6 2003

The Boston Globe has written up a very positive column about the new LibertyLink
wireless phone headset that is designed to compete with wireless Bluetooth
headsets. LibertyLink doesn't use radio frequencies - it uses magnetism to create
its wireless connection - and, thus, does not interfere with any other radio
frequency-based wireless system. Apparently, LibertyLink based headsets are coming
on the market quickly - and will be even cheaper than comparable Bluetooth
headsets. It may not be an overall replacement for Bluetooth, but in this one
application, it sure sounds good.

==================================================================

The dawn of a new wireless experience
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff, 10/6/2003

The unwiring of America continues apace, from our laptops to the phones on our
hips -- and soon, perhaps, our thermostats. It began further back than many people
realize. Just look at your TV remote control. That uses infrared radiation --
basically a kind of light that's undetectable to the eye. But infrared has some
limitations. For one, there's the line-of-sight thing. Like a beam of light,
infrared travels in a straight line, so your remote has to be pointing at the TV
set in order to work.  It'd be tough to use an infrared wireless headset with a
cellphone; toss the phone in your pocket, and you'd break the connection.
Enter Bluetooth radio networking. With a range of about 30 feet
and an indifference to personal attire, Bluetooth wireless headsets
have begun to catch on worldwide. But Bluetooth is on the same
frequency as those WiFi wireless data networks so many of us
have installed. So signals from a Bluetooth phone will sometimes
interfere with the Internet data flowing into a WiFi-equipped laptop.
Indeed, one Bluetooth phone may even interfere with another. This
sort of thing is always an issue when different radio devices share
the same frequencies.

So why not get rid of the radio, for products like headsets? Not
with an infrared headset -- we've considered that. There's another
option -- magnetism.

Wilmington's Aura Communications was started in 1995 by
scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The
company's latest product, the result of six years' labor, is a chip
called LibertyLink that generates an incredibly weak magnetic
field, a "bubble" about five feet in diameter. The chip can then
transmit data by modulating the magnetic field at low frequencies
-- 10 megahertz or so, compared to 2.4 gigahertz for WiFi and
Bluetooth. But even during modulation, the magnetic field emits
no radio waves, so the headset can't interfere with any other
wireless devices.

Now, just plug a LibertyLink device into your cellphone, don the
wireless headset, and you're ready for a nice, long chat.
Especially since the whole thing can deliver up to 25 hours of talk
time on a single double-A battery, according to vice president of
sales Dan Cui. The Globe didn't confirm Cui's 25-hour claim; even
journalists don't talk that much. But Aura's magnetic bubble
technology still seems like a winner. A prototype of the system,
plugged into a standard cellphone, worked exactly as advertised.

A Michigan firm, Fonegear LLC, plans to have LibertyLink
headsets on store shelves in time for Christmas, at a price that
demonstrates another advantage over Bluetooth. An equivalent
Bluetooth headset, the Jabra FreeSpeak, runs about $130;
Fonegear's headset will cost about $60.

And that's just the beginning. Cui says NASA is interested in
putting LibertyLink chips into future spacesuits, so the suits can
relay life-support data to receivers mounted inside the space
shuttle. And the next generation of the chips will support
high-fidelity music, so a cellphone can double as a wireless MP3
music player. There's even a manufacturer of airline seats who
wants to embed LibertyLink chips inside the headrests, then hand
out wireless headsets to the passengers. You couldn't do that
with radio chips that might muck up the navigation gear in the
cockpit. But a mild magnetic field never hurt anybody.

Here on the ground, there's still plenty of work for radio-based wireless, and new
ideas continue to sprout. One of the latest has a name even sillier than WiFi.
It's called Zigbee, and it may finally bring about the long-awaited era when we
can manage our homes by remote control.

Zigbee is a lot like WiFi, only weaker and much cheaper. While WiFi devices have a
range of up to 300 feet, a Zigbee will only reach about 30 feet. Each Zigbee
chipset is expected to cost just a few bucks and will run on a standard battery
for a couple of years. That's because you'll only use them in brief bursts.

Say you've got a Zigbee inside your refrigerator, and it begins to malfunction.
The fridge's diagnostic computer notices the problem and generates a trouble
ticket. This gets handed off to the Zigbee, which sends a digital data burst to
your home's wireless network, and from there to Ol' Lonely at the local Maytag
dealership.

We've been hearing about such automated appliances for years. Why haven't we seen
them?  Because the necessary devices cost too much and are too hard to set up. A
consortium of 50 leading companies, including Philips, Motorola, Intel and
Hewlett-Packard, think that Zigbee is finally simple and cheap enough to make a go
of it.

But never mind those guys. How about Leviton Manufacturing Co., a maker of light
switches? Or Honeywell International Inc., the world's leading producer of
thermostats? They're members of the Zigbee consortium too. And they're the ones
that really matter. When the real estate ads boast of new houses with Zigbee light
switches and thermostats, you'll know that home automation is finally for real.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at [email-masked].

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2003/10/06/the_dawn_of_a_new_wireless_experience/

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