IP seller plans to integrate GSM, Bluetooth cores

IP seller plans to integrate GSM, Bluetooth cores
By Craig Matsumoto, EE Times
December 13, 2001 (5:15 a.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20011210S0060

SAN MATEO, Calif. — Intellectual property provider TTPCom Ltd. this week will demonstrate its first iteration of a combination GSM and Bluetooth device.

The company's goal is to create an integrated device that costs $3, cheap enough for second-tier OEMs to build Bluetooth-enabled cell phones, said Charles Sturman, Bluetooth product manager for TTPCom. Top-tier cell phone manufacturers such as Nokia and Ericsson are working on their own integrated GSM-Bluetooth products, he said.

So far, TTPCom has combined application-level GSM and Bluetooth software onto a processor embedded in the GSM baseband chip. TTPCom will be showing this technology on an evaluation board at the Bluetooth Developers Conference in San Francisco this week.

The second and more complex step, which TTPCom expects to complete within a few months, is to integrate the real-time eleme nts of Bluetooth software — the so-called link controller layer — onto the GSM baseband.

Finally, by the second half of 2002, TTPCom hopes to have its GSM and Bluetooth cores integrated as a single baseband chip. While Nokia and Ericsson are likely to accomplish the same feat, TTPCom is aiming to bring the integrated technology to lower-tier OEMs who want to build inexpensive Bluetooth-enabled handsets, Sturman said.

OEMs will still need to buy a separate Bluetooth radio chip, but it's the baseband that needs integrating, TTPCom said. "The bulk of the cost is in the baseband system," Sturman said.

TTPCom doesn't sell chips itself, so Sturman wasn't able to predict when the integrated baseband chips would hit the market.