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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.
I think the point of Bluetooth is that you don't see the wires. ;)
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.
From the article:
The three-year road map will help show that Bluetooth has staying power, Foley said.
Under the road map, the SIG plans to complete the Bluetooth Version 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) specification by the end of this year, increasing the data rate to 3Mbit/sec., up from 1Mbit/sec. in the current Version 1.2, Foley said. Products are expected to appear with the EDR as early as June 2005, he said. The newer-version products will also be backward-compatible with older versions.
So it will go from 1 Mbit/sec. to 3Mbit/sec which isn't too bad considering its uses. I mean, really, how much bandwidth does your keyboard and mouse need? Or your cell phone earpiece? I don't think anyone needs to show that Bluetooth has "staying power." It targets a particular market and particular applications and does its job very well. You don't need 1Gbit/sec of bandwidth (which you'll get with UWB) to use your keyboard, mouse, or earpiece.
I think the most interesting thing is the multicasting to seven other devices. That should allow a lot of fun and interesting applications.
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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.
Has anybody here tried to develop software to run bluetooth hardware? It's enough to make you cry! Has the SIG done anything to try and make developing applications easier?
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 am glad to see Bluetooth development continues. It seems like a technology that was released just a little before its time.
I have written before on my desire to see a true PAN (Personal Area Network), and there does seem to be some work being done on this idea.
Instead of going to all-in-one units (the PDA/phone/camera/game machine Slashdot users like to rant against), why not have individual pieces that work together seamlessly?
Imagine a phone being broken into three pieces - a headset (similar to the Bluetooth ones you are seeing now), the actual phone receiver (for interacting with your provider) that is nothing more than a small matchbook sized piece without any UI, and then a full PDA to contain addresses and phone numbers. Want to call someone? Grab your PDA and hit a phone number. it uses the PAN to tell the phone what to dial, which then uses the PAN to interact with the headset.
Do not want to carry the PDA that day? Fine, leave it at home. It is always synced with the phone device, which can be controlled using your voice (voice dialing).
Taking pictures? Listening to music? Why should my digital camera be limited to the 128-512 meg flash card I put into it? I have my iPod/MP3 player with hard drive on me! The camera could use the PAN to save images to the hard drive on the MP3 player. You could even separate the MP3 player from the hard drive, and use the PAN to stream from hard drive to a set of PAN-enabled headphones (or to an MP3 control device hooked up to the headphones).
So you put pictures you took with your digital camera onto the hard drive. Want to view them? Take out your PDA with its nice screen and view them on that via the PAN.
Want to get online? Pull out your PDA (or laptop) and have it interact seamlessly with your phone device to get online.
Walk up to a computer? Have it PAN-enabled so it detects who you are before you sit down (or not, depending on how security-minded you are).
The advantage of Bluetooth over 802.11[x] is the power constraints. Bluetooth and similar technologies are designed with battery life in mind. I do not want to have to charge every PAN device I have every night to make sure I do not run out of battery just walking around.
The technology to do all of this currently exists. I think this is the next step Bluetooth (or a Bluetooth replacement) needs to take.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
Imagine a phone being broken into three pieces - a headset (similar to the Bluetooth ones you are seeing now), the actual phone receiver (for interacting with your provider) that is nothing more than a small matchbook sized piece without any UI, and then a full PDA to contain addresses and phone numbers. Want to call someone? Grab your PDA and hit a phone number. it uses the PAN to tell the phone what to dial, which then uses the PAN to interact with the headset.
Why imagine? This is exactly what I do every day. I have a Nokia 6310i, an Palm Tungsten T3 and a bluetooth headset. Furthermore my Thinkpad T30 also has bluetooth built in. Bluetooth is a mandatory feature for me now. Once you start using it, you'll wonder how you did without. It makes it vastly easier for electronic devices to communicate.
My phone is essentially a portable wireless base station in addition to being a phone. I can check email from either my PDA or laptop and connect through the phone without ever taking it out of my pocket or bag. If I need to sync my pda, no cables are necessary. I can touch dial numbers on my phone directly from my PDA address book. I just tap the number and it dials. I've surfed the web (albiet slowly) from my laptop while riding in a car on the highway and my phone was in the truck. Effectively my PDA and cell phone are a single device but I only have to carry the bits I'm actually going to use.
I see people compare bluetooth to 802.11X all the time but those folks miss the point. It's not about connecting to the internet. It's a replacement for almost any data-carrying wire. Bluetooth replaces my PDA sync cable, phone sync cable, mouse and keyboard USB cables, phone ear bud cable, and if needed my ethernet cable. Furthermore it could replace printer cables, IR ports, serial cables and several others. Most importantly I can take it anywhere.
WiFi is almost non-portable only replaces the ethernet cable because that is all it is designed to do. (and it does a good job of it, I'm not bashing WiFi) Bluetooth isn't optimized for what WiFi does so it's slower but also consumes less power and has other uses WiFi does not. If you are comparing WiFi to Bluetooth, you don't understand Bluetooth. Not everyone needs one or the other, but the comparison between them is silly. It's very much like comparing Firewire cables to Ethernet cables and arguing that one is better than the other. The argument just doesn't make sense.