Bluetooth Technology - Essay Example

? Bluetooth technology Introduction: Bluetooth technology is a wireless technology that is used between two paired devices. Today, Bluetooth technology is built into several of our daily used products ranging from cars, mobile phones, laptops, PDAs, printers and even in medical equipments. Data like videos, pictures, music, information and voice can be transferred easily between the two paired devices over a short distance and that to within seconds. Wireless signals transmitted by Bluetooth cover short distances up to 30 feet. These signals communicate less than 1 Mega Byte per second (1 Mbps). The Bluetooth technology works across a secure and unlicensed short-range radio frequency. Bluetooth technology sends information within our own personal space which is known as our Personal Area Network (PAN) at distances of up to 10 meters. Bluetooth is also known as the IEEE 802.15.1, an industrial standard for wireless PANs (personal area network), since it can be used in smaller offices with few employees (Peter, 2006). A product having Bluetooth facility means that it some hardware or small computer chip along with some software that lets one product connect wirelessly to another using the Bluetooth technology. History of Bluetooth: The Bluetooth technology was formulated in 1994 by the Engineers of a company called “Ericsson”, a Swedish company. The reason behind this invention was to eradicate the rummage in homes and offices. In 1998, Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) was developed and its founding members were Ericsson, Intel, IBM, Nokia and Toshiba. The motive behind was to connect their products and also the organization devoted its time in maintaining the Bluetooth technology. Within six months success of the Bluetooth technology many other companies joined in this new invention. Since then the Bluetooth technology has boomed and has been adapted by many other companies. The word “Bluetooth” draws its motivation from a 10th century king of Denmark named Harold Blatand or Harold Bluetooth (Peter, 2006). King Harold contributed in uniting different countries which are now Norway, Sweden and Denmark which at that time were at battle and had major disagreements. Hence the name has its inspiration from the King’s work, Bluetooth is all about connecting and communicating in an uninterrupted single flow allowing different devices from cell phones to automobiles to communicate and network with each other. The Bluetooth Logo is established on the H and B of Harold's name. How the technology works: Initially the range of Bluetooth device brooded over 5meters but now it can attain a range of 10meters after expanding into 700-800kb bandwidth. The transmission frequency range for Bluetooth is between 2.4 and 2.4835 GHz with a maximum transfer speed of 2 Mbps per second whereas at the beginning it was around 1Mbps per second and the frequency range was 2GHz. Bluetooth technology functions in the unlicensed industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) band. It uses a spread spectrum, frequency hopping, full duplex signal at a nominal rate of 1600 hops/sec (Justin, 2004). The network of Bluetooth contains a powerful topology PAN (personal area network) also known as piconet. These piconets are established dynamically and automatically. Nodes are organized in small groups of piconets. Every piconet has a leading node known as master and other nodes in a piconet are referred as slaves. A node can belong to a multiple of piconets, and such a node is called as a bridge. Piconet contains a minimum of two and a maximum of eight peer devices. The devices will communicate using protocols that are part of the specification. Slaves do not directly communicate with each other but instead rely on the master as a carrying node. Bluetooth provides a half-duplex communication channel. Communication between nodes in different piconets involves the bridge nodes. A bridge node can’t be active in more than one piconet at a time. It is active in one piconet while being deposited in others. Data exchange takes place between two nodes only when both nodes are active. The master decides the communication order and duration for the slaves. (Roch Guerin , Enyoung Kim , Saswati Sarkar , Lucent Technologies , U. Pennsylvania, U. Pennsylvania, 2002). Uses of Bluetooth technology: The main feature of Bluetooth technology is low cost, low power consumption and powerful communication. For short range communication Bluetooth technology is best and it is very popular in cell phones (Sanam, 2011). Originally the aim of the Bluetooth technology was just to be a wireless replacement for cables and wires between products like phones and headsets or between PCs, keyboard and mouse. Today, we can create new connections that weren't possible using wires before, like connecting our cell phones to our car stereo or printing a picture directly from our camera phone and all this is after the development and ripening of the Bluetooth technology. Bluetooth is a communication protocol that works best with low powered devices like Pcs, cell phones, printers etc. Bluetooth is a point to point communication (Brent, 2001). The primary feature of Bluetooth wireless technology is its ability to handle data and voice transmissions at the same time. This gives the consumers a variety of opportunities such as hands-free headsets for voice calls on cell phones, printing and fax capabilities, and synchronization for PCs and cell phones. Many upcoming devices are using this wireless technology like Sony Play Station 3 and Nintendo Revolution. Most people don’t like cables so in case if they want to copy or transfer their data from one device to another Bluetooth is a good option. Cordless telephone also uses this technology; it has one Bluetooth transmitter in the base and another in the handset (Peter, 2006). Bluetooth wireless technology is safe secure and its commonly found in all product these days. There are various applications and products based on Bluetooth. For wireless controllers, video game systems are also using Bluetooth facility. Many MP3 players and digital cameras have Bluetooth in order to easily transfer music, video and pictures to and from computer easily. Classical music world and organizations like Bregenzer festspiele is also starting to embark on this wireless technology. Bluetooth is used also used in PC devices like mouse and keyboard (Brent, 2001). The keyboard becomes the central hub for additional Bluetooth devices, such as a printer or digital camera. Primarily the Bluetooth technology can replace infrared or RF connections. It also lets the users get rid of the need of cord for devices such as PDAs, MP3s, digital cameras and cell phones for the transfer of small files. Most importantly the attractive feature of Bluetooth is that it connects quickly without the need of any software. This saves us from battling with our Pcs. Another amazing application includes capturing vehicle travel times and it has shown to be effective (Sanam, 2011). Bluetooth vs. other technologies: Infrared works in line of sight while Bluetooth has a range of up to 100meters. But Infrared can transfer data at a speed of up to 4 Mbps which is very fast rates for data transfer as compared to Bluetooth which offers only 1 Mbps. Infrared consumes less power than Bluetooth technology. Bluetooth facilitates both data and voice communication. When compared with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth has better security than Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi is a risky network, data can be stolen if lots of networks are attached and in case if they are hacked. Since Wi-Fi has a long range of connectivity its power consumption is more than Bluetooth. Both are wireless technologies but with different purposes. Bluetooth products make it easy to connect various electronic devices to each other without the need of cables whereas Wi-Fi was designed as a replacement or extension of the wired LAN (local area network). Wi-Fi is used to get access toward local area network in working areas while Bluetooth is used to carry out personal application as smart energy. Moreover Bluetooth is slow as compared to Wi-Fi. The bandwidth required for Bluetooth is 800 kbps and for Wi-Fi it is 11Mbps. Wi-Fi come into existence in 1991 and Bluetooth in 1994 (Justin, 2004). Future of Bluetooth technology: Bluetooth as a technology has its limitations but many people believe there is a huge future for Bluetooth wireless technology. In order to become a replacement for the current technology Bluetooth needs to be used in large networks. With the small range this makes it a bit of a difficult task. The long term future of Bluetooth wireless technology seems quite bleak, considering the inherent limitations of this technology such as short range, slow data transfer rates, the fact that both the devices need to be paid in order for the transmission, the inability to transfer both ways at the same time etc. Until and unless some how these inherent weaknesses are removed the Bluetooth technology cannot further prosper and will eventually be replaced by much versatile technology in near future. By using scatternets, intra and inter piconet scheduling and packet forwarding within scatternet, Bluetooth can successfully be used for large networks if these requirements are established. If the drawbacks of the Bluetooth technology are combated it can grab a large share of wireless device market (Justin, 2004). References: 1.Roch Guerin , Enyoung Kim , Saswati Sarkar , Lucent Technologies , U. Pennsylvania, U.Pennsylvania. (2002). Bluetooth Technology: Key Challenges and Initial Research. Conference, Proc. SCS Communication Networks and Distributed Systems Modeling and Simulation CNDS, no. 157-163 2.Ms. Sanam Javid Inamdar (2011). BLUTOOTH Technology in CAR.Research paper Computer Science. Vol. I, Issue. I / February 2011,pp. 178-180 3. Justin Blasdel (April 16 2004). The Future of Bluetooth technology. 4. Peter Suciu (September 1 2006). What is Bluetooth? 5. 6. Brent A.Miller, Chatschick Bisdikian (2001). Bluetooth Revealed. Read More