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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.
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 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