Waterproof phones

An interesting article referencing Blu Wireless on edn.com this week, Waterproof phones: What challenges lie ahead? It looks at the move toward waterproof handsets and the challenges this presents in terms of wireless data transfer:

 “Some of the major players are developing the next generation of Wi-Fi technology, 802.11ad Wi-Fi (more commonly known as WiGig), which uses the unlicensed 60-GHz band and has 7 GHz of bandwidth. This enables speeds of 5 Gbps and over to be delivered wirelessly. And ABI predicts 1.4 billion tri-band Wi-Fi chipsets that incorporate this 60-GHz band will ship by 2018.

However, the complex sampling rate, coupled with the lack of available R&D funding outside the big three – Intel, Qualcomm, Broadcom – means smaller firms would have struggled to compete in this potentially huge market space.

The answer to this market dominance could come from an IP business model with firms – notably Blu Wireless Technology – developing the IP that would allow these vendors to rapidly create and ship chips with this functionality.”