Wibree

Wibree is a radio technology from Nokia for local connectivity between electronic devices. Wibree is targeted for devices which have only a very limited power supply, e.g. button cell battery power, such as watches, wireless keyboards, toys and sport sensors like a heart rate monitor. In the vision of Nokia, Wibree is complementary to Bluetooth.

Wibree can only be used over rather short ranges of typical 5 m up to 10 meters maximum. The data rate is 1 Mbit/s, comparable to Bluetooth. Wibree operates in the 2.4 GHz band. Wibree provides ultra low power idle mode operation, simple device discovery and reliable point-to-multipoint data transfer with advanced power-save and encryption functionalities. The link layer provides means to schedule Wibree traffic in between Bluetooth transmissions.

Wibree is implemented either as a stand-alone chip or as a Bluetooth-Wibree dual-mode chip. Small devices will use the stand-alone Wibree while Bluetooth devices can use the dual-mode chip to extend Bluetooth device connectivity to these small devices.

In the summer of 2007, Nokia decided to merge the development of Wibree with Bluetooth. This will lead to a new Bluetooth specification with a low power for short distances.