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Bluetooth Plans to Triple Bandwidth
stallard writes "Yahoo! news reports that "The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) Monday is releasing a three-year road map for Bluetooth short-range wireless technology that includes a tripling of bandwidth and the ability to multicast signals to seven other users.""
Hardly short range. You can increase Bluetooth's range to a full mile, with a simple, inexpensive modification.
Actually, bluetooth's physical bandwidth is only 721kb. It's amazing what google will tell you if you ask it.
http://www.mobileinfo.com/Bluetooth/FAQ.htm#t5
http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1086977875.html
There should be a -1 (Don't know jack shit) mod option. On the other hand, I'm glad you've mastered your buzzwords.
And now for something completely different...a man with three buttocks.
It works that well when used correctly, when I am out and about with my cell phone, palm pilot, and the bluetooth head set, it works as stated. I can dial the cell phone with the palm pilot, talk on the head set and hang up with out ever touching the phone and there are no wires involved. Then I can hit the internet from my palm pilot via the cell phone with out any wire again.
So Bluetooth when used correctly can elimintate wires. The only problem is people try to applie it as a solution for non-existant problems, like you don't really need a bluetooth keyboard and mouse on a home computer, it would be nice, but it not a problem to have wires there.
Talk about aiming low: "signals to seven other users". Of course, as soon was there is a hardcoded limit people will want to exceed it.
I suspect that, given the range for high data rates is relatively low, unless your friends are the types who like cramming into phone boxes or VW beetles, it's probably not going to be a big issue.
Seven is the maximum number of Bluetooth devices in a "piconet", so that's where the limit comes from. Multicasting in this context means being able to transmit some data to all the other devices in the piconet ON THE RADIO INTERFACE.
Simple, but not necessarily practical (or even truthful, not sure) example: You have seven devices connected to a bluetooth basestation using BNEP (Bluetooth Ethernet Emulation). The BS is connected to Internet with some wire. Somebody from "outside world" decides to ping somebody in the Piconet.
The nearest router sends a broadcast ARP request asking who has IP Address x.x.x.x. Since there is no Bluetooth multicast at the moment, the basestation has to replicate the ARP request for each and every one of the devices. With multicast, it could just send the request once and everyone would receive it (with the right one replying).
In wireless LAN (802.11) you can broad- and multicast on the link layer just like in traditional wired net; Now they are just adding this functionality to BT.
Oh, and the limit of seven can be extended; A device can belong to multiple piconets.
Currently Bluetooth is about 721 kbits. EDR will extend it to 2.1Mbits.
tripling the bandwidth isn't really a good solution either if you ask me. while 30mbps is faster, it's not nearly enough to over take the up and coming wireless usb or wireless firewire. both of which i believe are going to be UWB based (i.e. 400mbps).
Tripling the bandwidth would allow lossless transmission to stereo headphones, where currently it's (slightly) compressed. It's a relatively small change in spec too - mostly just a change to the modulation scheme.
UWB will likely have a hard time passing regulations (except in the US), because it's a deliberate radiator over a large chunk of everyone else's spectrum. It's also dubious whether it's actually a low power solution, or better than OFDM (802.11g and friends) when power isn't an issue. It also doesn't exist in a useful commercial form, and probably (in my opinion) never will. Or at least, never should.
one of the interesting design decisions with bluetooth is that it operates at the exact same hz as a cell phone signal. hence the convergence with cell phones and bluetooth, as it was obviously designed with this purpose in mind.
No, it operates at 2.4GHz, like most other consumer digital wireless stuff.
maybe we'll get lucky and cell phones will have 1gb+ memory with built in mp3 player support one day, so i won't have to carry so many different damn devices:P
Because Bluetooth was designed with low power consumption firmly in mind, it's ideal for MP3 players. The transceivers these days are incredibly small. I'm sure you'll see it common place soon.
But how are you going to get 7 million people in a volume of 30 feet around you?
Seven is not too bad considering the purpose of bluetooth - short range cheap (as in low energy and cheap chipsetets) device to device communications.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've found that the speed of Bluetooth varies greatly by device.
When I transfer a file from my PowerBook to my SonyEricsson T86mc phone, it only goes about 5k/sec.
When I transfer a file from my PowerBook to my Sony UX-50 (Palm Pilot-type thingy), I get 35-40k/sec.
I don't know if this is a software issue, or just that the processor in the device has a hard time keeping up, or what.
For those of us who live in small spaces, and travel a lot, Bluetooth is a Godsend. I have nine Bluetooth devices, and can't imagine going back to wires.
World's tallest building rises in the desert
I hate to be picky, but I think everybody is using the word bandwidth to mean data rate.
Bandwidth has units of Hz and data rate has units of bits/sec. True that increasing the bandwidth of a signal can increase the data rate, but the reverse need no be the case.
In fact if you read the article they tell us that the increased data rate will be accomplished through changes in the data modulation (most likely by moving from binary phase shift keying, to quadrature phase shift keying, or higher).
DR. Null