Jeffrey Price Dr. Konak IST 220 Bluetooth Technology 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 2. COMPONENTS 3. BLUETOOTH ADVANTAGES/DISADVANTAGES 4. USES OF BLUETOOTH 5. THE FUTURE 7. DOCUMENTATION 2
1. INTRODUCTION Bluetooth technology is a wireless form of networking that creates personal area networks (PAN) or Piconets with a range of ten meters. It allows businesses and personal users to reduce the clutter of wires all around. There is an automatic connection made between devices without user intervention that allows for a carefree experience for the user. And also, let s face it; it s not expensive. The technology was first dreamt of in 1994 by Swedish company Ericsson and is now being put into practice all over the world. Today there are more than two thousand companies that form the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG). The five major companies that founded the Bluetooth SIG are Ericsson, Nokia, Toshiba, Intel, and IBM. The goal of the Bluetooth SIG is to create a world with intelligently acting, connected devices. For example, some projected ideas are a refrigerator that updates a grocery list for you, or a PDA that controls the heat, lights, and locks of your home. The name Bluetooth comes from the Danish King Harold Bluetooth who was the king of Denmark and Norway from 935 936. Bluetooth had unified several tribes from Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. This name fits because the intention of Bluetooth is to unify technologies such as computers and mobile phones. The Bluetooth logo originates from Nordic runes for H and B. Figure 1.1 Bluetooth logo 2. COMPONENTS The most important aspect of the Bluetooth hardware is the transmission of the data out an antenna by a transceiver micro chip. Bluetooth operates in the 2.4 GHz ISM (Industrial Scientific Medical) band which is set aside for use by industrial, scientific, and medical devices and supports both voice and data. This band is cluttered with a lot of devices that transmit on it, 3
because it is not required to gain permission from the FCC to use this band. The problem of interference arises. Bluetooth has a low power output of only one milliwatt which is only powerful enough to transmit ten meters, but can still penetrate through walls so that different devices can be connected even in separate rooms. This low level of output helps remove the possibility of interference with a computer system, garage door opener, etc. Another way that Bluetooth overcomes interference is through frequency hopping. The device will pick around seventy-nine different, randomly chosen frequencies in a given range, and change between these one thousand sixty times per second. This allows for a use of the full radio spectrum allocated and thus eliminating the chances of collision or interference of signals. Figure 2.2 Frequency hopping allows for little to no interference between Bluetooth devices and other ISM band devices A feature of Bluetooth is a point-to-point or point-to-multiple-point connection. One device acts as a master and another acts as a slave. The device can have two to three different slaves at one time. A transmission between by a slave can only be done with a request from a master. The connections for data transfer can be either synchronous (SCO - connection-oriented) or asynchronous (ACL connectionless). A master can have three SCO links with up to three slaves but only one ACL between each master/slave. These networks that are formed are called piconets. More than one piconet can connect to form a scatternet. 3. BLUETOOTH ADVANTAGES/DISADVANTAGES Bluetooth has a lot of positive things it can do for the end user. First of all, just look at the clutter underneath your desk of wires that connect you to the outside world, your mouse, your 4
monitor, your speakers, your printer, etc. The primary goal has been to eliminate that. Imagine taking a brand new computer out of its boxes, placing it on your desk, turning it on and everything is connected and ready to be used. Bluetooth is also inexpensive. A microchip will only run you around five to twenty dollars per chip (OREILY S). Bluetooth is more effective for use in the handheld and mobile world than infrared connections, which is used in a lot of handheld devices such as PDAs and cell phones. The logic behind this statement is that with infrared you need to aim the devices directly towards each other or else transmission is impossible. In addition, in order to make that connection it involves the users actually making the connection. With Bluetooth the transmission is done without any involvement of the user. As soon as the devices come into range of each other they are already creating a connection and giving each other the information they need if there is a need for transmission. The pulses sent out by Bluetooth are also received without having the devices pointed directly at each other. Radio waves sent out by Bluetooth devices aren t limited by line of sight. The waves penetrate walls, thus creating a network in separate rooms where infrared couldn t pass through walls, you need to be in sight of the transmitter to connect. The use of the 2.5 GHz ISM band enables Bluetooth to be used worldwide. This is a standard frequency range which allows mobility in operation. Another quality that increases mobility is the low power consumption. The Bluetooth technology doesn t consume that much power while it is transmitting, which entices a user to want to use it, because the cost of batteries won t go up in a dramatic fashion. A limitation of Bluetooth is its range. With only one milliwatt being sent out, there is a range of about ten meters or approximately thirty feet. This restricts the uses of Bluetooth, but it was only intended to eliminate wires in a short visual distance, not to connect networks all across the nation. Another problem is that it isn t as fast as other wireless technologies. The transmission rates are only seven hundred and twenty three kilobits per second which is nothing compared to the eleven megabits per second in WiFi networks. 4. USES OF BLUETOOTH Some of the uses of Bluetooth include in telephones, cell phones, PDAs, and many more. I will go into further detail about a couple of these items. In cell phones, Bluetooth technology has been used to create wireless headsets that allow you to talk on your cell phone on a headset 5
without ever having to plug into your cell phone. This would come in handy for the business man or woman who is on the go and driving in his/her car; they would just have to place the headset on and never worry about tangling themselves in the wire. Figure 4.1 A Bluetooth enabled headset for your cell phone. Another use of the Bluetooth technology is the printer adapter. This allows you to transmit to the printer without having to connect a wire. The adapter is set up with a parallel jack on the side that connects to the printer, and then an antenna on the other side to allow for the transmission to be received. Imagine for instance that your PC is in your office, but for some reason you need to have the printer in a separate room. To hook the printer up you may have to drill a hole through a wall or buy a lot of feet of expensive parallel cable. But you could simply use a Bluetooth adapter to connect through the wall and eliminate all problems that may arise from a wired connection. Figure 4.2 A Bluetooth enabled printer adapter 5. THE FUTURE According to a report from a market research firm Cahner In-Stat Group, there is a prediction that in 2006 there will be five hundred and ten million Bluetooth chips being shipped out. There is also a projected sale of $1.2 billion of Bluetooth enabled-devices by 6
2009. Predicted future is to have a complete wired electronic world. Your refrigerator would send a grocery list to your cell phone. Your driveway would turn the lights on in your home when you pull in to the driveway. You finger print ID pad on your cell phone would your front door to unlock itself. Another prediction is that you will be able to put your cell phone down in your car and just speak, because your Bluetooth enabled car will allow you to talk on your phone hands-free without hassle or risk of injury. Also there is the use of Voice over IP and Bluetooth to create cordless phones that can be used for long periods of time without charging, and there would only be need for a cradle to charge it. Bluetooth will be stressed as a convenient way to make your life easier without having to spend a lot of money. 7
DOCUMENTATION Figure 1.1 - http://www.uks.com.tr/_rainbow/images/logo_bluetooth.jpg Figure 2.1 http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/bluetooth7.htm Figure 4.1 - http://www.gsmworld.com/technology/bluetooth/images/headset.gif Figure 4.2 - http://images.techtree.com/ttimages/story/x-bluetooth-printer-paralle.jpg 1. Franklin, Curt. How Stuff Works: Bluetooth. http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/bluetooth.htm 2. The Official Bluetooth Wireless Info Site http://www.bluetooth.com/ 3. Wikipedia. Bluetooth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bluetooth 4. Proust, Albert. A Bluetooth Primer. http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2000/11/03/bluetooth.html 5. Harold Bluetooth. http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/people/a0822784.html 6. Becker, Anita S. Wave of Bluetooth Component Crests. http://pd.pennnet.com/articles/article_display.cfm?section=articles&subsection=displ ay&article_id=93243&version_num=1 7. Yeargin, Adam and Leanna Frankland. Bluetooth. http://www.wam.umd.edu/~ayeargin/bluetooth/future.html 8