Loud-mouthed Wi-Fi devices could use sound to connect

THE warbling sound of the dial-up modem could soon make a comeback - but it won't take us back to an era of superslow internet access. Instead, Intel is proposing that bleeping audio tones could make connecting devices to Wi-Fi routers easier.

The aim, revealed in a US patent application last week, is to avoid the hassle people face when trying to connect wireless-capable devices like TVs and speakers to a router.

People currently have to key the unique eight-digit ID code displayed in a TV's set-up menu or printed on the back of speakers into the router, ensuring that it only talks to those devices. But this is time-consuming and difficult for people with impaired vision to do.

Intel's idea, hatched at its applications lab in Portland, Oregon, is to replace the manual process with an automated audio communication scheme. Using built-in loudspeakers, Wi-Fi-capable gadgets would emit a unique series of sounds to a Wi-Fi router equipped with a microphone. "The unauthorised wireless device audibly emits a uniquely identifying secret code," say inventors Marc Meylemans and Gary Martz in their patent (US 2011/0277023). The router hears the code, verifies the device type and then automatically enrols it into the wireless network.

The sounds emitted could vary - instead of bleeps they could be coded clicks or even music, the pair write. It could even speak the code with a voice synthesiser for the visually impaired.

If the system proves to be secure - the sound shouldn't be audible through walls, for instance - Intel says it could form part of a future variant of Wi-Fi Protected Setup, the standard enrolment software used by all Wi-Fi device makers.

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