March 21, 2002 — Bangalore, India

MindTree’s Bluetooth Baseband Controller receives BQB Certification
MindTree Consulting’s Bluetooth baseband solution has received BQB certification for the Bluetooth core specification 1.1, including all mandatory features and all optional or conditional features. This qualification was in conjunction with one of CETECOM Inc’s BQBs. MindTree’s portfolio of Bluetooth wireless technologies, called EtherMind, now includes a Bluetooth 1.1 BQB certified Bluetooth Upper Layer stack and baseband solution, in addition to application profiles. The stack and the application profiles were certified in May last year.

“Companies who place a premium on power consumption and size benefit from the EtherMind baseband design because of its low gate count, implementation of power management schemes and the availability of multiple interface options to radios, codecs and processors,” said Vilas Bhade, director for engineering at MindTree. “The baseband can easily be targeted to any technology or process, according to the customer’s choice.”

Meanwhile, MindTree expects its systems design expertise to be a key differentiator in the market. “Our expertise in product platforms for example printers, cell phones, PDAs, access points, analyzers and instrumentation equipment coupled with our knowledge of Bluetooth, enables us to integrate Bluetooth wireless technology much faster and more cost effectively into the product design itself,” added Bhade. The EtherMind portfolio has already been licensed and included in protocol analyzers, PDAs, cell phones, set top boxes, access point and printer product designs. Customers include fabless chip companies, semiconductor companies, and system houses in the US, Japan, and the European Union.

MindTree’s approach to the baseband design provides flexibility to chip vendors without compromising performance parameters such as processor load and memory requirements. The baseband controller is available as a silicon-proven synthesizable Verilog core with LMP/HCI firmware. This baseband core can be reconfigured to work with any 8/16/32 bit microcontroller on which LMP/HCI firmware resides and be reconfigured to interface with many Bluetooth radio implementations. Voice applications can easily be built, as the SCL data transfer is supported in the baseband design itself.

The core executes all datapath functions with error detection and correction logic in addition to the management and control of the lower layer protocol. The baseband core also manages channel selection and hopping functions, relieving the host processors) to manage only the LMP/HCI layer functions. Intelligent radio control ensures low power consumption in addition to alternately low power features of Bluetooth wireless technology. The baseband architecture supports various on-chip FIFOs and sizes to enable optimal custom application designs. With minimum processor load and chip power consumption, fabless companies can easily customize EtherMind to develop the lowest footprint SOC design for any target application.