Bluetooth strikes back against Thread
The Bluetooth special interest group has hit back at the recent announcement of the Thread group for low power version of Zigbee for the Internet of Things.
"Bluetooth Smart is the de facto standard for the Internet of Things. It offers incredibly low power, simple and secure wireless connectivity and because it’s been adopted natively by all major operating systems, it’s already an existing standard in the smartphones, tablets and PCs of billions of consumers," said Steve Hegenderfer, Director of Developer Programs at the Bluetooth SIG. "Smart Home has been stuck as the next big thing for 60 years. In order to take it mainstream, you need a mainstream wireless technology."
The new Thread group highlights problems with existing Zigbee-based networks such as a lack of interoperability, inability to carry IPv6 communications, high power requirements that drain batteries quickly, and ‘hub and spoke’ models dependent on one device so that if that device fails, the whole network goes down.
To solve this, Thread is a self-healing IPv6 encrypted networking protocol based on the 6LoWPan protocol for low-power 802.15.4 mesh networks developed by Nest Labs, which is now part of Google. This allows existing popular application protocols and IoT platforms to run over Thread networks with just a software upgrade, supporting over 250 devices in a low-power, wireless mesh network that also includes direct Internet and cloud access for every device.
“Existing wireless networking approaches were introduced long before the Internet of Things gained ground,” said Vint Cerf, vice president and chief Internet evangelist at Google and advisor to the Thread Group. “The Thread protocol takes existing technologies and combines the best parts of each to provide a better way to connect products in the home.”
Thread has been developed by Nest Labs for its smart thermostat, now part of Google, and the group also includes Silicon Labs, Samsung Electronics, Freescale Semiconductor, Big Ass Fans and ARM.
Thread is designed with a new security architecture that allows consumers to add and remove products to the network via a smartphone, tablet or computer, and Thread products will be tested to ensure that they work together effortlessly and securely right out of the box with a Thread logo to show they have been certified for quality, security and interoperability.
Hegenderfer points out Bluetooth has been doing this already.
“Device interoperability just isn’t an issue. It has an effective range of up to 100 meters and Bluetooth 4.1, introduced in December last year, added a means to create a dedicated channel which laid the foundations for IPv6 connectivity,” he said. “Bluetooth Smart mesh is already possible and we’re working to make it a reality under the Bluetooth standard. If you want to speak to a few things, you can use a niche technology, if you want to speak to a few billion things in an ultra-power efficient way, then Bluetooth Smart is the way.”
UK-based chip designer CSR has developed its own mesh protocol that sits on top of Bluetooth 4.0 that it is releasing as an open standard.
"With the CSRmesh technology CSR has demonstrated that Bluetooth Smart can form the basis of mesh networks that can collect data from and control thousands of devices. The wide adoption of Bluetooth Smart in tablets and smartphones enables rapid adoption and a simple personal user experience for consumers," said Rick Walker, Marketing Manager for IoT at CSR. "Technically the CSRmesh uses a flood approach that simplifies the user experience so that the consumer can just switch on the device and needs no understanding of the networking roles that are required in a routed mesh approach, and CSRmesh uses the smartphone or tablet for direct control and doesn’t require a specific bridge hardware to be used to interact with Internet of Things (IoT) devices."
CSRmesh doesn’t offer full IP addressing but adopts a light weight data structure which enables much lower power and lower processing burden for simple devices. “It has already been adopted for lighting solutions, and will be extended later in the year to further Smart Home devices and CSR is in the process of opening the specification to additional partners such that it can be widely adopted in IoT products,” he said.
www.threadgroup.org
www.csr.com
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