Can WirelessUSB bite Bluetooth?

Cypress Semiconductor is introducing a new technology that it says could leapfrog Bluetooth and other standards to create a standard for wirelessly linking peripherals such as mice and keyboards to a PC. The company's new WirelessUSB chip operates in the unregulated 2.4GHz band, offering lower latency than 27MHz, 433MHz and 900MHz devices, while being simpler and less expensive to implement than Bluetooth, Cypress said. The CY694X chip can connect as many as seven devices up to 10 meters with a latency of less than 20 milliseconds (ms)--this latency can drop to just 8ms when four devices are connected.

WirelessUSB's low latency compared with the more-established 27MHz, 433MHz and 900MHz devices is intended to appeal to makers of gaming peripherals, which require latency lower than 30ms. In networking, latency and bandwidth are the two factors that determine the speed of your connection. Latency is the time it takes for a data packet to move across a network connection.

The chip is sampling now, Cypress announced on Monday, and will be out in production volumes in the first quarter of next year. It is priced at $3.92 (about Â£2.50) in high volumes, and unlike Bluetooth will not require new drivers for operating systems that already support USB.

"Current wireless (human interface device) technology has serious limitations, while Bluetooth is overkill for these applications. Cypress's WirelessUSB products satisfy the three critical requirements for this market: power, price and latency," said Cathal Phelan, vice president of Cypress' Personal Communications Division, in a statement.

Like Bluetooth, WirelessUSB uses a frequency-hopping spread-spectrum technology that allows it to operate in the same area with devices using the same frequency range without interference. Cypress said that batteries should last up to six months in typical keyboard applications. The technology allows transmissions to be encrypted. It can achieve a maximum data rate of 217.6Kbps.

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