Bluetooth SoC hops to resolve wireless conflicts

Zeevo has developed a system-level Bluetooth solution aimed at the PC market, the TC2000-PC.

Zeevo has developed a system-level Bluetooth solution aimed at the PC market, the TC2000-PC.

The solution includes Zeevo's TC2000 single-chip Bluetooth solution plus the BluePC firmware release, which includes coexistence with 802.11b and scatternet - key features critical to the PC market.

The first of Zeevo's software-based coexistence solutions is the "selective frequency hopping" approach, which provides effective simultaneous operation of Bluetooth and 802.11b.

This unique approach is fully interoperable with the current Bluetooth specification (ver.1.1) and does not require any changes to other devices to support the solution.

In addition, Zeevo's flexible, software-based architecture ensures that as the Bluetooth SIG Coexistence Specification evolves, Zeevo will quickly provide a software upgrade on existing silicon to support the SIG-mandated adaptive frequency hopping scheme.

Zeevo also currently offers the alternate wireless medium access (AWMA) solution for colocated Bluetooth and 802.11b units, which uses a single signal from a colocated 802.11b device to resolve coexistence issues.

Zeevo's AWMA scheme works with any 802.11b solution on the market and does not need special signals from a specific solution.

Scatternet, necessary for the viability of uninterrupted PCs and PC peripherals, is also available from Zeevo.

The ability to link 4 piconets while supporting 10 simultaneous Bluetooth links clearly demonstrates the importance of scatternet implementation.

Additionally, Zeevo's scatternet solution allows any device to be a master in one network and a slave in another, which is a critical feature in the desktop PC environment to avoid losing links.

For example, no link is dropped in an existing Personal Area Network (PAN) when a master in another network initiates a link with the PAN master.

This unique feature is fully interoperable with current Bluetooth devices and does not need other devices to support Scatternet.

In fact, Zeevo can act as the scatternet master for other devices increasing the reliability of Bluetooth interoperability.

Zeevo's implementation of a unique "piconet scheduling" approach maintains extremely high throughput through 10 links.

"Zeevo's TC2000-PC enables our personal computing customer base to offer market leading PC products by addressing concerns regarding coexistence with WLAN 802.11b and support for scatternet".

said Bob Van Steenburgh, Vice President of Marketing for Zeevo.

"Furthermore, Zeevo's single-chip solution simplifies Bluetooth implementations while providing the lowest system cost".

Zeevo's TC2000-PC chip is currently being designed in at several customers and more than 10 of Zeevo's current design wins are in the PC/PDA space.

Anil Aggarwal, President and CEO of Zeevo states, "We continue to offer a technically superior solution for the PC market.

Zeevo takes coexistence with WLAN 802.11b issues seriously and has devised a multi-tiered approach to solving this problem.

Our working solution is available today and is also flexible enough to quickly meet the requirements of the Bluetooth specification as it evolves.

As always, we keep our customers' key concerns regarding interoperability and standardisation in mind when designing our solutions".

TC2000 available now in production quantities from Azzuri Technology.

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