Pair to promote combined cellular/cordless design

A Cambridge Silicon Radio product story

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Jun 14, 2004

CSR is working with IVT Corp on Bluetooth designs to advance "one-phone" combined cellular/cordless applications.

CSR is working with IVT Corp on Bluetooth designs to advance "one-phone" combined cellular/cordless applications.

The design makes it possible for manufacturers to produce low-cost Bluetooth-enabled converged cellular and cordless phones for the home - using the Cordless Telephony Profile (CTP) within Bluetooth to replace existing analogue or digital technologies such as DECT.

Bluetooth's integration into telephony will enable a Bluetooth mobile phone to switch between mobile and fixed-line networks, depending on the user's location, using only one telephone number for both types of connection.

Using CSR's BlueCore Bluetooth silicon, this Bluetooth CTP application also provides a GSM mobile phone with cordless phone function.

When the mobile phone enters into the range of a CTP-enabled access point (AP), it can connect to the AP via Bluetooth wireless technology, and then act as the cordless phone of the AP.

The Bluetooth-enabled GSM mobile can then be used to dial-out or pick up phone calls anywhere in the range of the access point (100m).

This is then a fixed line call rather than a mobile call and the cost is therefore lower.

This first step in the CSR IVT converged telephony co-operation is a reference design for a Bluetooth-enabled cellular/cordless telephone.

Bluetooth is ideal for this application because its voice capabilities are on a par with digital cordless standard DECT and are better than standard cellular voice quality; Bluetooth also offers better support for data communications, as well as offering lower costs.

IVT's Bluetooth CTP enabled products and reference design use the CSR BlueCore2-Ext chip at their heart, this means that a very small number of external components are required to manufacture a Bluetooth cellular/cordless handset.

The reference design makes use of Bluetooth technology's Class 1 range, enabling an operational range of around 100m.

Increasingly however, network providers are keen to take ownership of this and are looking at how best to bring the benefits of this converged technology to the consumer.

Bluetooth CTP brings benefits to consumers in countries such as China, where IVT's R and D centre is based and the UK where British Telecom have recently announced plans for its Bluephone project.

Dr Qiang Gao, CEO of IVT commented: "These products enable the merging of mobile networks and fixed line networks, and provide consumers with more convenient and cost-effective connections".

Dr Gao continued: "With CSR BlueCore, the leading Bluetooth technology, IVT can help GSM or CDMA phone manufacturers to develop CTP enabled phones, by either porting IVT's Bluetooth stack and CTP profile into their mobile phone platform, or, by offering a very small Bluetooth Class 1 module with the CTP profile embedded within BlueCore".

"Thus, allowing the Bluetooth class 1 module to communicate with phone host system using AT-commands".

"IVT's CTP enabled access points and GSM phone are in preproduction stage and IVT is ready to take sample orders".