According to chief executive officer, Raj Sundaresan, the company is waiting for ZigBee Alliance to declare the standards for mesh, peer-to-peer short range communication standards for different devices.

However, even before the declaration of the standards Airbee has started development of software for couple of original equipment manufacturers (OEM) for embedding the same in the latter's semi-conductor chips. Airbee has signed an agreement with the Ireland-based SupaRule Systems Ltd, that develops and manufactures electronic measurement devices for industrial applications.

The other OEMs that Airbee develops software for include Sharp Electronics, Winedge Electronics, Singapore and Visonic, Isreal, Linkplus, USA. "We can modify our software if there is going to be a variance in the ZigBee standards that will be announced couple of months down the line," Sundaresan adds.

Simply put, Airbee is in the business of developing embedded software that facilitates device communication without wires at short range. This has applications in home, building and industrial automation.

For instance, with Airbee's software, a single remote control device one can operate different household gadgets - air conditioners, refrigerators, television, music system.

Similarly, in the case of building and industrial automation one can integrate and centralise lighting, heating, cooling, security and other operations and reduce energy costs. The software could be used in the healthcare sector too.

Is it similar to Bluetooth technology? It is in terms of application but not in terms of other characteristics like costs, communication and distance. Airbee's typical range is 900 feet for voice and 240 feet for data as compared to Bluetooth's 30-ft range for both voice and data.

According to Ram Satagopan, chief technology officer, Airbee's software characteristics include non-line of sight, self configuring and self healing networks, low cost, low energy consumption, interoperability, scalability, voice and data and several other features.

"Our software embedded chip can talk to any other chip so there will not be a communication gap," remarks Sundaresan. According to him Airbee is platform agnostic, which would facilitate development of application software depending on devices.

According to Sundaresan, the company will be shifting the research and development activity to its Chennai centre set up at an outlay of $1 million. The six-member centre will soon be expanded to house 20 engineers. An additional investment of $1 million is envisaged in the Chennai centre.

The company has filed a patent for its software.