As mobile devices increasingly add wireless communications to their repertoire the power consumption of the protocols becomes a factor. Bluetooth and Zigbee are fairly good at controlling power use, but they are short-range and fairly low speed. Wifi and WiMax give much better range, but the power use grows significantly, as it can do with the 3G cellular technologies.

A new technology promises to change that. xMax says they work with existing wireless communications and makes them much more energy-efficient. If it works out, this could be a major boom for mobile devices.

Larry Mittag