Wii Wi-Fi + Wiimote Bluetooth = Uh-oh…

According to an article in EDN, there’s a potential for some signals to cross in a bad way where the Wiimote Bluetooth and the Wii Wi-Fi meet. It’s neither the fault of Nintendo, or even Broadcom, which supplied Ninty with both the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi chips. Let them say it best: “Bluetooth and WiFi donÂ’t coexist well at all.”

Theoretically they should coexist well at all – Wi-Fi’s wide frequency band (hence the “Wi”) should eliminate interference from narrowband signals, and Bluetooth was designed with Advanced Frequency Hopping (AFH). In plain English, on paper, they shouldn’t be interfering with each other’s signals. Broadcom says that the fault lies with the guys who established the Bluetooth and 802.11 standards. They never envisioned a world where both could coexist in the same box – in short, inside the Wii.

In the Wii, the Bluetooth is always on, so as long as the controller is on. “There is no downtime in which to perform time-division multiplexing with another radio” – in English, it can’t hop frequencies as well if it can’t shut off intermittently. The problem crops up when the Wi-Fi is moving significant packets of data, and when the Bluetooth bumps up its transmission to “enhanced data rate 2.0.” Interference results in reduction of the Wi-Fi’s data transmission rate, which translates Wi-Fi error rates.

In designing the Wii’s wireless suite, Broadcom tried their best to minimize these risks. For example, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi both must communicate with a bus that analyzes packets and signals and prioritizes them, much like a traffic cop prioritizes decongesting the street with heavier traffic. But Broadcom’s warning that if and when the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth load becomes heavier – especially during downloads and video streaming, not to mention packet-heavy online gameplay – the bus might not be able to keep up.

Nintendo and Broadcom are looking for solutions to head off this traffic jam – not only in the Wii, but potentially for the Wii to cope with the future wireless-and-digitized living rooms of the future where you’ve got PS3s, 360s, iTVs, Wi-Fi routers, cellphones and wireless VoIPs, and so on, and so forth. They and everyone else will have to, if we want to envision a world without cables.

According to an article in EDN, there’s a potential for some signals to cross in a bad way where the Wiimote Bluetooth and the Wii Wi-Fi meet. It’s neither the fault of Nintendo, or even Broadcom, which supplied Ninty with both the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi chips. Let them say it best: “Bluetooth and WiFi donÂ’t coexist well at all.”

Theoretically they should coexist well at all – Wi-Fi’s wide frequency band (hence the “Wi”) should eliminate interference from narrowband signals, and Bluetooth was designed with Advanced Frequency Hopping (AFH). In plain English, on paper, they shouldn’t be interfering with each other’s signals. Broadcom says that the fault lies with the guys who established the Bluetooth and 802.11 standards. They never envisioned a world where both could coexist in the same box – in short, inside the Wii.

In the Wii, the Bluetooth is always on, so as long as the controller is on. “There is no downtime in which to perform time-division multiplexing with another radio” – in English, it can’t hop frequencies as well if it can’t shut off intermittently. The problem crops up when the Wi-Fi is moving significant packets of data, and when the Bluetooth bumps up its transmission to “enhanced data rate 2.0.” Interference results in reduction of the Wi-Fi’s data transmission rate, which translates Wi-Fi error rates.

In designing the Wii’s wireless suite, Broadcom tried their best to minimize these risks. For example, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi both must communicate with a bus that analyzes packets and signals and prioritizes them, much like a traffic cop prioritizes decongesting the street with heavier traffic. But Broadcom’s warning that if and when the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth load becomes heavier – especially during downloads and video streaming, not to mention packet-heavy online gameplay – the bus might not be able to keep up.

Nintendo and Broadcom are looking for solutions to head off this traffic jam – not only in the Wii, but potentially for the Wii to cope with the future wireless-and-digitized living rooms of the future where you’ve got PS3s, 360s, iTVs, Wi-Fi routers, cellphones and wireless VoIPs, and so on, and so forth. They and everyone else will have to, if we want to envision a world without cables.