IBM is considering ditching the wireless networking protocol, Bluetooth, in favor of a new souped-up version of infrared being touted by the Infrared Data Association (IRDA). As part of its strategy, Big Blue has announced a transceiver, single-chip and software that supports the emerging Advanced Infrared (AIr) protocol.
IBM still claims to support Bluetooth but Brain Ingham, manager of market development at IBM said the technology was a long way off, and as yet there were still no products from any companies that incorporate the protocol. He blamed the low data rate transfer of 1Mbps as one of the possible hindrances to adoption of the technology. The new infrared standard can transfer data at speeds of 4Mbps with future generations increasing to 6Mbps, he said. The other major hurdle with older versions of infrared was that most PC manufacturers did not include software in their machines to support the protocol.
We are in talks with all of them now to correct this and Microsoft is fixing the software issue. He added: There are over 100 million units out there that are infrared-ready and the Advanced version is backwards compatible with all of them. The IRDA claims that AIr will enable users to instantly connect and collaborate in a wireless environment, with mobile computers, printers, wireless modems, cell phones and other peripheral devices on the LAN. With the technology, the IRDA said it has solved one of the major set backs with infrared, namely that devices communicating with each other using infrared had to be in line of sight for transmission to take place.
With Advanced Infrared we are able to transmit data between devices that are 3.6 meters apart on the angle and at under 2 meters from anywhere in the room, a spokesperson for the IRDA said. The maximum distance that the devices can be apart is 6 meters. Brendan Hanningan, analyst at Forrester Research said the technology was another contender in the battle for a single wireless network protocol when infact two or three can probably exist side-by-side. He added that Bluetooth was more suitable to mobile phone applications as it lends itself well to voice by operating on a frequency that hops to maintain a good connection, whereas Advanced Infrared can transfer data at much higher speeds making it ideal for sending documents to printers and downloading data from PDAs.