Airbee Wireless and Link Plus Corp., two Washington-area companies, have announced a strategic partnership for co-developing a series of new products around the emerging ZigBee/IEEE 802.15.4 wireless standard. Under terms of this strategic alliance, the companies are integrating a bundle of secure, high-performance RF wireless technologies to be implemented as a sophisticated series of low-cost systems. In addition, the two also plan to offer a system-on-a-chip (SoC) solution. Resulting products will implement Link Plus AWICS radios and microprocessor-based hardware and Airbee UltraLite embedded software protocols.

”Our patented AWICS wireless hardware platform provides a long range, real-time radio capability that can be applied to several large and important emerging markets, among them automatic meter reading, home automation, point-of-sale, and automotive security,” said Jonathan P. Gluckman, executive vice president and COO of Link Plus. “When combined with Airbee's proprietary software stack, we expect to be able to reduce system size and power to produce highly efficient modules for these and other industries.”

Gene Sharer, Airbee Wireless COO, added: “Porting Airbee software to Link Plus' proven microprocessor environments accelerates time-to-market for many applications, while using approved ZigBee specifications leverages Airbee's investment in protocols emerging from the ZigBee Alliance. One of our major contributions to the strategic partnership is our long-term expertise in developing a complete package of application program interfaces (APIs). Application notes to support these APIs are critical tools when porting our technology software bundles from one platform to another.”

The two executives also anticipate their co-licensing agreement to reduce time to market significantly for their respective product development programs. They said that the relationship is expected to develop a revenue stream of several million dollars per year.

Furthermore, Gluckman noted that Link Plus is building a substantial presence in the automobile security market. Airbee's technology has immediate application to a remote, keyless entry product Link Plus is preparing for volume production late in the third quarter of 2004. He estimated 10,000 units would be produced initially under a separate contract with a third party, growing to more than 300,000 units a year. Link Plus has many similar opportunities in the automatic meter reading environment as well, another market where RF unit volumes are expected to be large.

Sharer said the next engineering specification from the ZigBee Alliance was expected to be published soon. Airbee is a participating member in the alliance.