CSR today gave the first public demonstration of its Ultra Low Power (ULP) Bluetooth silicon at the Continua Health Alliance medical conference in Luxembourg. CSR’s ULP Bluetooth silicon consumes 10 times less power than standard Bluetooth when connectable according to the company. CSR’s ULP Bluetooth demonstrations consisted of two ICs successfully transferring ULP Bluetooth data packets 50-times faster than standard Bluetooth, meaning that the devices were consuming as little as 1/50th of the power. In addition, in establishing the connection, the ULP devices used 1/10th the power required by standard Bluetooth. CSR’s demonstration ICs employed both standard Bluetooth (v.2.1) and ULP Bluetooth radios.

CSR calls these devices ‘dual-mode’ because they support both flavours of Bluetooth radio. ULP Bluetooth is a complementary Bluetooth technology that can be used to transfer simple data sets between compact devices and is expected to be able to run for up to ten years on one button cell battery.  The technology was previously known as Wibree. ULP Bluetooth technology has very low overheads, which makes it much faster to connect devices; this means much less power is consumed. End products based on ULP Bluetooth will therefore have battery standby times measured in years, not just days or weeks.