Bidirectional communication between BLE/FSK devices and WiFi access points (APs) combines the benefits of long battery life, low device cost, and ubiquitous Internet access. However, prior cross-technology communication (CTC) solutions require transmission mixers inside FSK chips, thus not applicable to newer ultra-low-power (ULP) BLE chips, which removes these mixers to conserve power. Furthermore, throughputs of prior CTC solutions are limited to 1Mbps.

With the potential for connecting billions of WiFi devices to low-power Bluetooth/FSK devices, WiFi-Bluetooth cross-technology communication (CTC) has drawn significant interests from academia and industry. However, state-of-the-art CTC solutions either are limited to one-way communication, or require multiple chips with hardware modifications.

WiFi is the de facto standard for providing wireless access to the Internet using the 2.4GHz ISM band. Tens of billions of WiFi devices were shipped worldwide and WiFi Access Points (APs) are ubiquitous in public, enterprise and personal environments. We have also witnessed the fast growth of IoT (Internet of Things) devices. With more stringent board-space and power requirements, many IoT devices use more power-efficient, lower-cost and smaller wireless chips, such as Bluetooth or proprietary wireless chips. Due to the mismatch of different wireless technologies, these devices access the Internet indirectly via far less ubiquitous IoT gateways. Bluetooth and most proprietary wireless chips are based on FSK (Frequency-Shift Keying) modulation since FSK can be implemented with extremely simple and low-power FM (Frequency Modulation) circuits.

Bluetooth and WiFi are the two dominant technologies enabling the communication of mobile and IoT devices. Built with specific design goals and principles, they are vastly different, each using its own hardware and software. Thus, they are not interoperable and require different hardware.