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- Summer 2005 Project
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- Bluetooth and
RFID -
- Bluetooth -
It has been a decade since the birth of Bluetooth in 1994, when the Ericsson Company started research on new wireless technology to fit their needs. Today many cell phones and most PDA’s come equipped with this technology; there are also numerous Bluetooth devices that can easily be attached to a PC via a USB port.
Bluetooth is essentially a wireless communication protocol and can be compared to 802.11b and infrared technology. The main problem with infrared is the line-of-sight requirement - two objects’ transceivers should be able to ‘see’ each other. Bluetooth overcomes this difficulty because it uses radio signals and therefore does not require the path between two devices to be clear of objects.
In some ways the Bluetooth protocol is similar to the well-known wireless LAN protocol. For example, both of them operate in the unlicensed ISM (industrial, scientific, and medical) band at 2.4GHz. On the other hand, the purposes of these two protocols are quite different. While wireless LAN was created to connect big devices (typically PC’s and/or laptops), Bluetooth is meant for smaller ones. The range of wireless LAN is approximately 300 feet and the range of Bluetooth 30 feet. The data transfer speed of the two wireless protocols follows similar comparison. Another bottom line difference is that Bluetooth was created to have low-level power consumption, and thus be useful in cases where energy resources are limited.
Today there are different scenarios in which Bluetooth is used. Some of those include synchronization of information between Bluetooth-enabled PDA and cell phone, cable replacement between PC and peripheral devices, wireless gaming, and others.
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