Cees Links (Cees is pronounced as “Case”) is founder and CEO of GreenPeak. He is a pioneer of the wireless data industry, a visionary leader bringing the world of mobile computing and continuous networking together.

Cees' opinion pieces appear regularly in several leading industry magazines like EETimes, EDN, M2M, Embedded Design, Automation, Industrial Embedded Design and many more.

Below is an overview of these opinion columns which reflect Cees' refreshing approach to business and the industry GreenPeak is supplying to. Cees writes with a voice of a visionary and forward thinker. The articles often contain a humorous take on real life situations and put them into perspective of the wireless industry.

Enjoy reading!

Most recently added article

Febr 2012

Brainstorm on Low Power Design: What are the primary drivers for developing low power designs? Cost savings, movement to green, longer life for batteries?
More and more wireless devices around us in our homes are running on batteries: remote controls, thermostats, temperature, smoke and security sensors, etc. As a consequence, we have to often replace or recharge those depleted batteries. This can be quite a nuisance especially when they start beeping in the middle of the night. [...]

Previous opinion pieces

Jan 2012

How can the many standards organizations better cooperate with one another to improve the way things are done?
Competing companies offering different technology solutions for the same problem create market confusion for OEMs as well as for customers. For example, 3D TV market has stalled because of different 3D rendering technologies (using active glasses, passive glasses, or – no glasses at all).
The various associated standardization bodies competing for the market have created an
additional level of confusion [...]

Oct 2011

The secret success of Steve Jobs: Wi-Fi and wireless internet
Many have lauded Steve Jobs for his vision and leadership that changed how people use computers, how they consume personal media, and how they communicate with each other. Everyone knows about i-Books, i-Phones, i-Pods and i-Pads. What is much less known is the fact that Steve Jobs is the godfather of Wi-Fi [...]

July 2011

ZigBee RF4CE vs. Bluetooth
When Bluetooth was announced in the late nineties, it was positioned as making Wi-Fi redundant. Unfortunately it was not successful in this. Bluetooth is for short range (say a room), whereas Wi-Fi is for medium range (say a home, or a department floor in a company) [...]

June 2011

What is Green Technology?
Everyone talks about recycling, ROHS, etc. but no one really address the issues of batteries used to power a wide range of industrial and electronic devices. Disposable batteries are a leading pollution issue. In addition to the large amounts of power required for mining and refining the raw materials, manufacturing and then disposal, batteries are also filled with heavy metals and toxic chemicals. [...]

April 2011

Have new product designs suffered as a result of the going green movement or have they benefited?
In general, new product designs have not suffered from going green – but frankly, product developers have had a much more challenging time [...]

March 2011

Standards, a blessing or a curse?
First the curse: it usually takes an endless amount of time for a standard to come together, and once it is completed, often it feels like compromise that does not fully serve everyone’s interests.
But clearly there are blessings as well [...]

December 2010

ZigBee compared with Bluetooth Low Energy
Within the communication and electronics industry there have been a lot of speculative predictions and hype that Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) will eliminate the need for ZigBee. There are several arguments against this [...]

October 2010

How to make the next generation smart home wireless network GREEN
In a SMART home, control devices and monitoring sensors throughout the house are wirelessly connected to each other and a central control station such as a set top box.  This box in turn can talk to the outside world by a cable or Internet connection.  These devices and sensors can include home security systems, home health monitoring, entertainment such as music, TV and video [...]

August 2010

GreenPeak’s Environmental Management System - An interesting approach of the penny wise, pound foolish pitfall
As a fabless semiconductor company, with no production facilities, the environmental impact of our activities is limited and the implementation of a formal Environmental Management System is not obvious [...]

February 2010 - The wireless home of the future: the third home wireless network – Smart and Green
For many years – decades even, we have been waiting for the automated "smart" house – a house that is as technically advanced as our automobiles [...]

November 2009 - RF remote controls will wipe out IR
When economic times are tough only exciting differentiators that can be offered at no extra cost will be adopted by consumer electronics. Radio-based remote controls (instead of Infra Red
ones) for TVs, DVDs and settop boxes offer just that by providing a radically different
and improved end-user experience. [...]

September 2009 - The ZigBee Umbrella
The ZigBee standard was always positioned as the solution for low power (sense- and control) networking. But low power networks come in a variety of flavors and it took some time to recognize and classify them [...]

June 2009 - GreenPeak's commitment to Quality
The most efficient way of introducing a formal approach to quality is by implementing and certifying for a globally recognized quality label. GreenPeak has chosen to introduce its Quality Management System according to the ISO 9001:2008 standard for quality [...]

April 2009 - ZigBee RF4CE and Bluetooth Low Energy
Let’s go back in history. When in the late 90’s Bluetooth was announced it was stated that this was going to be the death of IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN’s… for the simple reason that Bluetooth was going to be everywhere and solve it all [...]

March 2009 - Will RF4CE be the Killer App for ZigBee?
Recently the RF4CE Alliance got themselves adopted by the ZigBee Alliance, a clear example of a win-win situation. For the RF4CE Alliance it means an immediate broad adoption in the consumer electronics industry, while avoiding the cost of setting up a “marketing machine” to achieve this [...]

February 2009 - GreenPeak at the World Economic Forum
The relevance for GreenPeak of being selected as of the 34 Technology Pioneers 2009 of the World Economic Forum can only be appreciated by going the WEF Conference in Davos and understand what an important get-together this is[...]

January 2009 - Green GreenPeak
There is a general consensus amongst scientists that the world is warming up based on overwhelming data. There is also a general serious concern about the impact from rising sea levels to the extinction of animals. There is still a serious debate whether the cause of this global warming is largely natural fluctuation or whether there is a dominant impact of human activities,
but at the same time companies are looking at what they can do about it, largely lead by a concept called “carbon footprint” [...]

December 2008 - Say Good Bye to Infrared and Hello to Radio based Remote Controls
Sometimes things are as they are for no specific reason, other than that was the way it was. One good example is the “point-and-shoot” of infrared-based remote controls. Why are we still using IR to control our home electronics? [...]

November 2008 - No more batteries
After cordless phones and wireless Internet there is a third wireless wave coming: wireless sense and control networks, connecting all kind of equipment in our homes from freezers to light switches, from consumer electronics and remote controls to sensors [...]

October 2008 - Macro problems solved at micro level?
Sometimes crises can become overwhelming and in particular the combination of global warming and the energy crisis is an overwhelming one. At the same time it is clear that there are tremendous sources of clean energy around (the sun, wind, tides, etc.) that solving the energy problem is a matter of time, money and persistence [...]

September 2008 - A powerless infra-structure…
In one or another way we are all familiar with base stations for wireless. Both on a large scale: and on a smaller scale [...]

Augustus 2008 - The Internet of Things – the next Internet revolution
We are all starting to get familiar with the world of Internet as a world on its own, even to the point that you may wonder how the world was organized without it? [...]

July 2008 - Wireless Sensor Networks – for a Green World
Our factories, refineries, warehouses and offices all waste energy. However, by using the next generation of ZigBee based wireless sensor networks, not only can we greatly reduce wasted energy, we can also reduce the amount of energy required to actually operate these networks [...]

June 2008 - The third wireless revolution – sensor networks
If you ever had the foresight in 1970 to wonder along what sequence of events wireless technologies would start penetrating society, you probably would not have started first with high quality voice networks, then followed with high speed data-networks and finally ended with low data rate, low duty cycle simple sense and control networks. Most likely you would have suggested a sequence the other way around [...]

May 2008 - A quiet revolution – redefining sense and control networks
We are all too familiar with sensors, in particular temperature sensors, but of course also with motion sensors, carbon monoxide sensors or what about parking sensors? Actually let’s realize: sensors are everywhere [...]