System design issues for low-power, low-cost short range wireless networking

The emergence of battery powered handheld devices as popular computing devices is presenting new challenges. Among the most important challenges is the need to  providea low cost, low power wireless networking access to handheld devices. The constraints posed by battery power and cost require a careful re-evaluation of system design issues at all layer of the protocol stack. In this paper, we present the  design of a short range wireless networking system called BlueSky which is being developed at IBM Research to address these challenges. We show that the 
optimization objectives for short distance indoor wireless systems within ISM band are quite different from those for traditional cellular wireless systems. We also argue that in the next millenium the primary optimization criteria for the design of (short range) wireless systems will shift from the traditional spectral efficiency towards battery lifetime and cost.