Low Data Info At A High Data Rate

Zigbee-based point-of-sale terminal

Innoviti launched a Zigbee-based point-of-sale terminal under its own brand name at the beginning of 2007. This is unique among many of the Indian companies that generally act as ODMs.

From the company's press release:

"Payezee™ is a wireless accessory for point-of-sale (PoS) terminals for the pay-at-table and other short-range wireless markets. payezee™ is currently being sold in Asia through PoS OEMs.

payezee™ pro is a new enhanced version of payezee™ based on ZigBee technology. payezee™ pro uses ZigBee’s ability to allow for quick addition and removal of devices in a mesh network to reduce the power consumption in standby to about 1/10

th

of that in other short-range technologies. It further reduces operating mode power consumption to about 50% of other technologies. In addition, Innoviti has developed a custom network layer that effectively uses the low data rate requirement of a payment transaction to trade-off bandwidth vs. range and provide for an increased range in payezee™."

Ingen Announces New Medical Technology, OxyAlert(TM)

Link: Ingen Announces New Medical Technology, OxyAlert(TM).

At the beginning of October, Ingen Technologies, a publicly traded medical device manufacturer, announced its new wireless-enabled OxyAlert(TM) product. OxyAlert(TM) relays the status of an oxygen delivery system to a remote receiver via a wireless microchip referred to as "ZigBy". This product enables freedom of movement for patients and caregivers from the oxygen delivery system, while monitoring the amount of oxygen delivered.

According to a recent article in ZDnet, the product is based on IEEE 802.15.4 chips from Jennic, but that we could find no other evidence of this.

openPR.com - EnOcean expands and strengthens Management Team

Link: openPR.com - EnOcean expands and strengthens Management Team.

EnOcean, the leading provider of the award-winning, patented, energy-harvesting wireless sensors today announced the appointment of Graham Martin as Vice President Strategic Alliances. Graham is responsible for integrating technology and market strategy for the rapidly growing EnOcean Alliance community. Graham Martin brings 25 years experience as an executive and visionary in the wireless semiconductor and electronics industry. He joins EnOcean from Chipcon, a Norwegian low power RF IC company recently purchased by Texas Instruments, where he was responsible for Business Development and the promotion of standards and Alliances such as IEEE 802.15.4 & ZigBee. In addition, Graham served as President of stack provider Figure8Wireless in San Diego and as Vice Chairman & Board Director of the ZigBee Alliance.

Coronis Networks has Solid Market Presence in AMR

Coronis Systems, France-based designer and developer of ultra-low-power (ULP) and long-range wireless solutions, celebrated the production of its millionth Wavenis device in December, 2006. Founded in 2000, Coronis Systems now employs 45 people and is fast becoming a reference in the wireless industry for its innovative Wavenis technology. Wavenis is targeted mainly at providing OEM platforms and solutions for long-range wireless connectivity in autonomous devices with very little power capacity, but which nonetheless require extremely long battery life. Wavenis is one of the most deployed technologies in its class worldwide. The company’s earliest high volume market was for utility metering solutions, in which water meters, for example, are installed in extended wireless mesh networks to provide cost-effective and efficient automatic remote monitoring abilities. The largest Wavenis network in operation covers 50,000 gas meters in a single wireless mesh network. Typical installations include Wavenis end-points as well as smart repeaters, Internet/cellular network gateways, and middleware to interface with customers’ corporate information systems. Over the past several years, customer solutions have evolved to include many other wireless applications where range, reliability, and power consumption are key factors. Today, Wavenis technology is being deployed by industry leaders in diverse applications such as social alarms, access control systems, security, industrial fault detection systems, cold-chain monitoring, lighting systems in home and building automation, and asset and container tracking in logistics operations. Increasingly, OEMs and manufacturers are choosing Wavenis as the preferred technology for use in 2-way, longrange RFID applications. September 2000 Wavenis launched in automatic meter management applications. September 2002 Wavenis launched in industrial automation applications September 2003 Wavenis launched in home automation applications. March 2004 New facility in Asia expands production capacity June 2006 Coronis launches ultra-low-power system-on-chip design for 2007 December 2006 1,000,000 Wavenis first-generation devices produced Industrial production and specific technical performance make Wavenis unique in the marketplace, in spite of other technical proposals attempting to stake a claim for the ULP wireless space. Designed with the capability to serve as the low-power extension of the Bluetooth protocol, Wavenis deployment is truly a differentiating factor and testimonial to its abilities. “While other technologies are struggling for definition, we are deploying Wavenis platforms in high volumes, and in particularly innovative applications”, explains Laurent Maleysson, Coronis Systems general manager. “In the long-run, customers choose a technology because of its real-world performance, as well as technical assistance and overall customer service, not marketing hype. We have sold over a million Wavenis units because it is a solution that delivers a much sought-after set of long-range and ultra-low-power features, while offering a low price point that encourages high volume deployment.” Coronis Systems OEM solutions are available throughout the world, in the major license-free ISM radio bands in Europe, Asia, and North America. The company has an extensive international distribution network, as well as a subsidiary in Chicago, Illinois (USA), and a branch office in Shanghai, China.

New Wireless Startup - Wirama

Wirama, Inc. is a startup in the San Francisco area that just received $1 million in a Series A round.

The company was founded in 2006 by Ben Wild (Company President, and former graduate student at Berkeley), Dr. Upamanyu Madhow (currently Professor of Electrical and Computing Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara), and Dr. Kannan Ramchandran (currently Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley).

Wirama offers a means to increase range and reliability of RFID systems by greatly reducing the effects of fading. The research performed surrounding this activity to date includes:

1. Detecting Primary Receivers for Cognitive Radio Applications
Ben Wild and Kannan Ramchandran (UC Berkeley)

2. Building a distributed beamforming prototype
Ben Wild and Kannan Ramchandran (UC Berkeley)

Founding research for the underlying technology appears to have been funded by the National Science Foundation,  the Office of Naval Research, the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies,  the U.S. Army Research Office, and the National Science Foundation.

Adding cognitive radio and beamforming/smart antenna capability to wireless sensor networks in order to combat the effects of fading is an interesting idea, although perhaps not necessary in the case of networks equipped with frequency agility and low cost nodes. If it is inexpensive to add the nodes necessary to create a full network and that network is capable of avoiding interference, why is there a market demand for cognitive radio or beamforming enhancements?

Welcome To Your Digital World - Consumer Electronics Show, home integration, Apple, D-Link, Microsoft, Netgear, Cisco - CRN

"D-Link Systems (is) looking for ways to tie lighting, air conditioning and heating systems into home networks. "It's an area we're looking to get into in 2007, enabling the remote control [of home systems]," said Daniel Kelley, director of marketing at D-Link, Fountain Valley, Calif. The company is considering the development of its own branded home automation products and is working with Smartlabs, the maker of Insteon wireless home-control networking products, he said."

By Jennifer Hagendorf Follett, CRN

Link: Welcome To Your Digital World - Consumer Electronics Show, home integration, Apple, D-Link, Microsoft, Netgear, Cisco - CRN.

Wireless sensors extend reach of Internet into the real world - USATODAY.com

Wireless sensors extend reach of Internet into the real world

"To the untrained eye, the sleek, airy building constructed atop a decommissioned nuclear reactor at the University of California at Los Angeles could pass for high-tech office space.

A closer inspection of the glass-and-steel facade reveals dozens of miniature, low-resolution cameras and sensors. They're wirelessly linked to computers throughout the 6,000-square-foot space, keeping tabs on traffic flow in public areas and monitoring temperature, humidity and acoustics.

The building serves as a testing ground for developing and perfecting wireless sensing technology to connect major chunks of the real world to the Internet. Such networks could monitor the environment for pollutants, gauge whether structures are at risk of collapse or remotely follow medical patients in real time.

"I see this as the next wave of extending the Internet into the physical world," said computer scientist Deborah Estrin, who heads the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, a UCLA-based consortium of six schools."

By Alicia Chang, The Associated Press

Link: Wireless sensors extend reach of Internet into the real world - USATODAY.com.