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.""

Comments

Short range?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardly short range. You can increase Bluetooth's range to a full mile, with a simple, inexpensive modification.

Re:Short range?

[VeriTea]

No, the parent poster is correct when he calls it illegal. The FCC regulations that Bluetooth operate under do not specify transmitter power, they specify effective radiated power (ERP). That means that modifying / changing the antenna to get a more focused beam (thus increasing the effective radiated power) is just as illegal as increasing the transmitter power.

Re:bluetooth bandwidth

[Cranston Snord]

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.

Comment riddled with errors

[pslam]

for those who don't know, bluetooth is currently only 10mbps bandwidth. this is about as much as usb 1.0.

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.

You forget what Bluetooth is for

[SuperKendall]

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.