Bluetooth Demystified

Bluetooth by now has become a well established communications standard for shortdistance wireless connections. A standard developed that allows any sort of electronic equipment -- from computers and cell phones to keyboards and headphones -- to make its own connections, without wires, cables or any direct action from a user. This ground-breaking technology, finds applications almost everywhere you look. It replaces the many proprietary cables that connect one device to another with one universal short-range radio link. Everything from printers, desktops, keyboards to mobile phones now use this revolutionary technique. Bluetooth is in short a wireless technology. Talking about wireless technology the first thing that come to our mind is the Infra red transmission and reception, the technology used in remote controls. Why bluetooth then?? Infrared communications are fairly reliable and dont cost very much to build into a device, but there are a couple of drawbacks. First, infrared is a line of sight technology. For example, you have to point the remote control at the television to make things happen. The second drawback is that infrared is almost always a one to one technology. Data can be sent only in one direction at a time. Bi-directional data transfer is not possible. Bluetooth is designed to overcome the drawbacks of infrared technology. The following makes it different or better than other similar technologies. Its wireless. When you travel, you dont have to worry about keeping track of a briefcase full of cables to attach all of your components, and you can design your office without wondering where all the wires will go. Its inexpensive. You dont have to think about it. Bluetooth doesnt require you to do anything special to make it work. The devices find one another and strike up a conversation without any user input at all. Bluetooth is a Radio Frequency (RF) specification for short-range, point-tomultipoint voice and data transfer. It can transmit through solid, non-metal objects and its nominal link range is from 10 cm to 10 meters, but can be extended to 100 meters by increasing the transmit power. It is based on short-range radio links, and facilitates ad hoc connections for stationary and mobile communication environments. Bluetooth technology has been designed to operate in noisy radio frequency environments, and uses a fast acknowledgement and frequency-hopping scheme to make the link between the communicating devices. Bluetooth radio modules prevent and protect itself from interference by hopping to a new frequency after transmitting or receiving a packet of information. Compared with other systems operating in the same frequency band, the Bluetooth radio typically hops faster and uses shorter packets. The bluetooth system needs to communicate with devices that are in its

neighborhood and also with some that are a little far away. It therefore has two power levels of operation. A lower power level that covers a shorter personal area within a room, and a higher power level that can cover a medium range, such as within a home. Software controls and identity coding built into each microchip ensure that only those units preset by their owners can communicate. Bluetooth devices communicate in two different ways 1. Point to point. 2. Point-to-multi-point. A piconet is a set of devices that can be connected via bluetooth with one unit acting as the master for synchronizing purposes and the others acting as slaves. Several piconets can be connected together where each piconet is characterized by a specific frequency hopping sequence.. All the users participating on the same piconet are synchronized to this hopping sequence. All the devices remain in STAND BY mode before any piconet is formed. To start a piconet any of the devices can initiate the connection procedure, which then becomes the master of the piconet and thereby for all subsequent devices added to the piconet.A connection is made by a PAGE message if the address is known. An INQUIRY message is used in cases where the address is unknown. This message is typically used to find Bluetooth devices, including public printers, fax machines and similar devices with an unknown address. A power saving mode is used for connected units in a piconet if no data needs to be transmitted. The master unit can put slave units into HOLD mode, where only an internal timer is running. Slave units can also demand to be put into HOLD mode. Data transfer restarts instantly when units transition out of HOLD mode. The HOLD is used when connecting several piconets or managing a low power device such as a temperature sensor. Privacy is an important factor in any communication device. It becomes more relevant in the case of bluetooth since the devices think for itself rather than the user intervening in the communication procedure. Authentication and encryption are therefore necessary. Authentication is a key component of any Bluetooth system, allowing the user to develop a domain of trust between personal Bluetooth devices, such as allowing only the owners notebook computer to communicate through the owners cellular telephone. Encryption is used to protect the privacy of the connection. Bluetooth is an ever-blooming field pushing the frontiers of wireless technology. The big plus point that Bluetooth has is its wide range of applications. Bluetooth devices are also cheap and are readily available to the consumers. We have currently gone a long way in this field, but there are miles of untouched territory ahead. Only time can tell us if we have seen all or if we have just kissed the tip of the iceberg.