He said NFC (Near-Field Communication), a kind of short-range wireless connectivity being built into smartphones, is probably not the answer.

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Using the short-range wireless connection technology would allow, for example, wireless keyboards and mice as a standard feature on all machines.

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Dr. Lee is a leader in the field of computer chips for wireless technologies such as mobile phones, short-range wireless devices, and global positioning systems (GPS).

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But FHSS lives on in today's mobile phones: it is the basis of Bluetooth, a short-range wireless protocol that is used to connect handsets to other nearby devices.

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It also supports a wide range of multiplayer gaming, so kids can play against friends locally via short-range Bluetooth wireless, or over the cellular network.

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Nice start, but it pales next to the prospect of ZigBee, an emerging wireless standard for short-range machine to machine communications.

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Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (U-NII) devices today operate in 555 megahertz of spectrum in the 5 GHz band, and are used for short range, high speed wireless connections including Wi-Fi enabled local area networks and fixed outdoor broadband transceivers used by wireless Internet service providers to connect smart phones, tablets and laptops to the broadband network.

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And other wireless networking technologies such as Wi-Fi are gaining popularity, but mostly for short-range networks in offices and homes.

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