BLUETOOTH

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Bluetooth -- A wireless communications technology for digital devices using the 2.4GHz unlicensed band. Bluetooth was developed by IBM, Intel, Motorola, Nokia, 3COM and Toshiba. Advocates suggest that intercomputer peripheral device cabling can potentially be largely replaced by Bluetooth connections. Price per node will start at $20 and is projected to drop eventually to $5.

Bluetooth is a frequency hopping, packet switching technology designed to operate in a noisy environment. Power is about 1 Milliwatt. Range is 10 meters (35 feet). Operations are run at 1600 hops per second. Combinations of data and voice are supported with each voice channel requiring 64KBits/second Effective Channel Bandwidth is about 800 Megabit/second shared between the source and destination. This is implemented as either 432.6 KBits/Sec symmetric or 721KBits/Sec / 57.6 Kbits/Sec Asymmetric.

Forward Error Correction (FEC) is used. Secure encrypted connections are supported. Bluetooth is not restricted to Line Of Sight. Bluetooth can be slowed by interference from other Bluetooth devices or from industrial or domestic Microwave ovens.