February 4, 2010 -- As wireless technology becomes increasingly pervasive, vendors are offering a variety of hardware and software technologies to help you add communications functions to your products. Offerings support communications standards, including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS (global-positioning system), LTE (long-term evolution), and WiMax (worldwide interoperability for microwave access). Choosing the chips and associated software necessary to add wireless connectivity—and proving that your chosen implementation works and meets relevant certification requirements—can be challenging, however. Even if you put together a working design, you might not succeed in the market if you haven’t optimized performance, power consumption, cost, and size. And what’s optimum today might not be optimum as communications standards and your customers’ needs evolve, so you’ll want to choose a hardware and software implementation that lets you adapt without starting from scratch with each new generation (see sidebar “Wireless at a glance”).

By Rick Nelson, Editor-in-Chief, EDN,