Motorola, manufacturers begin embedding Bluetooth

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By James Evans

(IDG) -- Motorola Inc. will begin assisting OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) with embedding Bluetooth wireless capabilities in products, such as MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) machines, desktop printers and copiers, the company said Monday.

Bluetooth is a wireless PAN (personal area network) standard that uses low-power radio signals to exchange digital voice and data over short distances. Bluetooth can connect devices at speeds up to 1M bps (bits per second) and travel up to 10 meters. Just as Motorola is aiming this offering at the embedded market, others are pushing the adoption of Bluetooth for mobile phones, PCs and handheld computers.

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Motorola Computer Group, a business unit within Motorola, will enable the embedded Bluetooth technology to run on Linux, VxWorks by Wind River Systems Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 2000 and on two architecture processors, Apple Computer Inc.'s PowerPC and Intel Corp., Motorola said in a statement.

Companies will have two possibilities for embedding the Bluetooth technology in products, said Jorge Magalhaes, Motorola vice president, director of marketing. They can either put the embedded Bluetooth software directly on the Intel or PowerPC-based motherboard or attach a PMC (Processor Mezzanine Card) onto the motherboard.

The technology is expected to be ready by the fiscal fourth quarter of 2001 or first quarter 2002, Magalhaes said. No pricing is currently available, but it will be based on volume and Magalhaes said it will be "very, very reasonable."

Motorola will show an embedded single-board computer enabled with Bluetooth wireless technology between April 10-12 at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco. Motorola representatives will demonstrate printing and remote access to the user interface of an embedded computer over a Bluetooth wireless link.

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Motorola

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