Overview

Bluetooth is a low-power, short range wireless networking standard designed for local area voice and data communications. Mobile computers, mobile phones and headsets, PDAs and PCs, will all exchange information using the specification agreed to by the over 2,400 companies in the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG). The SIG companies are working together to ensure interoperability between products and include some of the top brands in wireless; names like 3Com, Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Lucent, Microsoft, Nokia, Toshiba, and of course, Motorola.

Design Challenges

• The challenging issues of interference rejection and coexistence with other devices in the 2.4 GHz band
• Issues concerning audio quality
• Keeping production costs low
• Major concerns regarding interoperability
• Limited board space

Solutions

We've leveraged our Bluetooth know-how into a comprehensive, V1.1 compliant system solution for developing the Bluetooth products of tomorrow: Motorola's Bluetooth Platform—a complete silicon solution, software stack, reference designs, and development kits. Motorola's Bluetooth Platform is flexible. It's integrated. And it gives you a wealth of options for quickly implementing robust, fully tested Bluetooth components.

Motorola, since the beginning of its Bluetooth development, has been aware of the challenging issues of interference rejection and coexistence with with other devices in the 2.4 GHz band. Thus, Motorola put a heavy emphasis on interference rejection performance into its design plan.

The Bluetooth Platform Solution from Motorola incorporates:

• Maximum likelihood sequence estimator (MLSE) rejects possible interference and is designed to give your Bluetooth products the best noise performance in the industry.
• Adaptive frequency hopping is designed to combat interference—and to benefit other radios and interference as much as the Bluetooth radio.
• The joint detector increases the reliability of the access code detection. This minimizes unnecessary re-transmissions that might interfere with other devices operating in the ISM band, such as 802.11 devices and lowers power consumption.

The results? A much improved Bluetooth user experience. Not only does Motorola's unique MLSE technology enable a robust link around other devices in the 2.4 GHz band., such as microwave ovens and cordless phones—but it also provides better range, more capacity, and improved quality versus traditional bit slicing radios*. The better range not only allows improved service availability, but also increases the service coverage area by up to 16 times*. The additional capacity means throughput is maintained in high-density Bluetooth environments like airports. The improved quality is provided by Motorola's interference rejection, designed to allow fewer service outages when strong interference, such as that caused by microwave ovens or other radios, is nearby.

Saving Developers Time and Money

The Bluetooth Platform Solution from Motorola is designed to enable the rapid development and deployment of cost-effective Bluetooth products. Motorola is one of an elite group of companies that has years of experience in developing Bluetooth from RF IC’s, to the Bluetooth stack, to end products and deploying this technology on a world-wide basis. By choosing the Bluetooth Platform Solution from Motorola, developers have a wealth of options to implement fully integrated, tested, qualified, and interoperable components thus avoiding many common component integration and interoperability problems. The Bluetooth Platform Solution from Motorola greatly simplifies technical support. With one phone call, a developer can obtain support on any part the complex Bluetooth architecture. This helps to avoid the frustration and time waste of trying to fix compatibility and interoperability problems between multi-vendor components.

Outstanding Audio

The Bluetooth system solution from Motorola builds upon Bluetooth’s native audio capability to deliver the highest quality audio possible. A key component of Motorola’s approach to delivering high quality audio over Bluetooth is the Bluetooth Audio Signal Processor (BTASP) that has been designed into the MC71000 Protocol Controller. Our engineering team drew upon a strong Motorola heritage of voice and data radio systems to ensure that robust and quality audio is delivered using Motorola’s system solution. The Bluetooth Audio Signal Processor (BTASP) is a dedicated module that handles all computation-intensive audio functionality in a Bluetooth system.

Interoperability

Interoperability is another major concern of the Bluetooth community—and for good reason. In real-world implementations, a multitude of Bluetooth products, likely from different vendors, will be called upon to interoperate transparently. The sheer complexity of the Bluetooth architecture means a careful, methodical approach is required for such interoperability to be achieved. That is why Motorola has implemented a five pronged interoperability strategy:

• Comprehensive system implementation - Motorola offers a comprehensive platform whose qualified components reduce the chance of interoperability problems due to component mismatch.
• TTCN-based development test framework - We use this formal test scripting language to exercise the solution at the HCI-and-below level. The result? A robust, solid implementation of the Bluetooth protocol.
• SIG standards participation - At Motorola, we know that a clear, precise standard is key to interoperability. So we have expanded our leadership position on the Bluetooth SIG—not only to clarify and evolve Bluetooth features, but also to assure early and frequent testing of reference implementations.
• UnPlugFest participation - At the SIG-sponsored UnPlugFests around the world, we’re there—testing platform components for interoperability and making sure the components can be expected to function seamlessly in any environment.
• Informal testing - Finally, we meet regularly with leading Bluetooth developers to clarify implementation questions and verify interoperability. These efforts have paid off. Quite simply, The Bluetooth Platform Solution from Motorola can be expected to give you the highest level of interoperability available—anywhere.

Advanced Packaging Technologies

Leading edge packaging technologies are being applied by Motorola‚ in developing Bluetooth solutions that are designed to out-perform existing single-chip Bluetooth products. The company is creating a comprehensive Bluetooth RF transceiver in a 6mm x 7mm x 1.3mm Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramic (LTCC) module; and a stacked die RF-plus-baseband Bluetooth solution, that includes RF transceiver and baseband ICs. With these advancements, Motorola is innovatively combining the best of wafer process and packaging technologies to offer Bluetooth solutions that are optimized for cost, while minimizing the board space for a variety of wireless devices.