CSR talks about its technology introduction strategy

Paul Williamson, director of low power wireless at CSR, said: "We create example designs to show what is possible with the technology, but we never sell or market directly to consumers. It is companies like Nike [which used an earlier version of the same chip in its basketball training shoe] which take it to market. Really, we put this out there as an example design and it has resonated with a lot of people. It is some way from market – maybe about 12 months from where you could take our prototype software and hardware and turn it into a formalised, mass produced product. It is probably a Christmas 2014 product at the earliest." While the company also supplies the technology for heart rate monitors, weight scales and the like, Williamson concedes they are less likely to capture the imagination. "We want to do things that are innovative; create things that move the market forward," he added. The touch screen was a collaboration with local Cambridge company Conductive Inkjet Technology (CIT), which has innovative technology and a substantial manufacturing capacity to showcase. It has a two stage additive process for printing circuits directly from digital files. The process patterns a catalytic ink and then immerses the image in an electroless plating solution to deposit solid metal onto the desired pattern. CIT invested in printing the membranes, whilst CSR designed the pcb layout and radio subsystem. Williamson continued: "Both companies have IP in the technology, but not in the way it is put together – it is not our intention to protect it, it is there to show people what can be done and go and develop their own flavour." Example designs like the touch screen are a useful way for companies to demonstrate the capabilities of their products that may get lost in a data sheet. For example, the 1010 and its larger sibling, the 1011, have the baseband modem built in hardware. Williamson explains the advantages: "That means that our microprocessor isn't being executed just to keep the radio protocol running and that allows us to save a lot of power. A lot of approaches to this market are to build a microprocessor that has to be executed every time you need to pre and post process a packet – every time there is a radio event, you need to spin out the micro at 16MHz before and after an event. We don't do that. We do that at low clock speeds in digital logic so we don't need to run the microprocessor and consume as much current." There is a 16bit microprocessor which on the 1010 it has 64kbyte of memory that is free for the customer's application. It has a further 64kbyte that are used in rom for the Bluetooth Low Energy stack and protocols. Williamson continued: "There is a series of standard peripheral interfaces and features that you would find on an mcu – including SPI, I2C, UART and a 10bit a/d converter – so they can write their application to reside there and drive those interfaces as they please. So it is more than just a radio, it is more of an embedded microprocessor with radio capability." So how does a company introduce the concept of a product that might not fall under the preconceptions of the market. Clearly having some eye catching design ideas makes a difference – but not everyone will immediately see the relevance of basketball shoes or membrane touch screen to their products. For this reason, reference designs can be invaluable and so CSR has released reference pcb layouts for both the 1010 and the 1011. These have been qualified to FCC, ETSI and the Bluetooth SIG standards so that they can be copied and pasted. They also come with a programming interface over SPI and a CSR tool chain and software development kit (SDK) so applications can be written on top, and the SDK comes with a range of example applications covering common use cases of Bluetooth Smart. There is also guidance if people want to rip it apart and do their own thing. The requirements for reference designs vary, according to Williamson: "There is an interesting mix. With rf devices, there is perhaps less design familiarity and individuals and companies like to see a complete known good layout of the device. So reference examples can give people a head start if they don't have that expertise. We get others who will take our hardware and our hardware design review and do their own thing, not referring to our bill of materials or design." However, it is the breadth of applications for Bluetooth Low Energy that makes reference designs a useful tool. "When it was simply Bluetooth, and people were designing Bluetooth headsets, they would recruit and develop the expertise to build the rf system. Now, you can use this for just about anything. You get companies whose speciality might be in software for cycling performance, for example, that want to build some sensors. They would definitely want hardware as close to turnkey as possible. So, because the market has become a lot broader and more people are willing to approach the technology, reference designs are getting more valuable and more important." The strategy for developing reference designs can also vary between companies. Should a reference design put every possible feature at the designer's disposal or should they be as simple as possible. And what performance features of the reference design should be optimised? Williamson said: "It's an interesting question. Ours are largely optimised for low cost simple layout. There are module developers who will create something highly integrated and expensive, but the guidance with our reference designs is to create something that can go on a one or two layer pcb and be simple and low cost to use. [In these devices] the radio and microcontroller are integrated, so we are optimising to ensure the performance of both. "We have an integrated switch mode power supply on the device that operates from 3.8V down to 1.8V, so it can take the full capacity from a typical 3V cell. There is component placement to keep the noise and stability of that power supply under control. And there is the rf connectivity – we are the only company out there at the moment offering a single 50? track out of our device so the antenna can be tuned in software. We do everything we can to make it easy for people to design with the device. And the reference layout is a good starting point for most people."