Signature - Q2, 2008 - (Page 44)

Bluetooth Technology 501 | By David English | Illustration by Peter Hoey | Q2 ’08 Full Speed Ahead Bluetooth technology is moving to accommodate 802.11 and ultra wideband wireless standards that offer much faster data transfer rates. That’s part of the good news; another benefit is that incorporating these standards under the Bluetooth technology umbrella will make them a snap to learn and use. Experience More Bluetooth technology is taking a giant leap into the future with much faster data transfer speeds. It will be a fascinating journey because the Bluetooth SIG is reaching outside the technology to embrace wireless standards that will continue to have a life of their own. To open up the Bluetooth core specification to accommodate these standards, the Core Specification Working Group is developing the generic alternate MAC/ PHY (AMP) architecture. With the generic AMP infrastructure in place, it will be able to support different high-speed channels. Two high-speed channels are currently under development: 802.11 (also known as Wi-Fi) and ultra wideband (known as UWB or WiMedia). Each brings its own advantages to Bluetooth technology, but the larger goal is an environment in which multiple radios can seamlessly function together for the consumer. “Bluetooth technology always has to be backward compatible, but in this case we also have to be compatible with the existing usage models for 802.11 and ultra wideband,” explains Joel Linsky, chairman for the Core Specification Working Group and principal engineer at Qualcomm. “This is something that we didn’t have to deal with in the past.” You might wonder what will happen to the current Bluetooth wireless radio (now known within the Core specification as the BR/EDR radio). The good news is that the BR/EDR radio won’t disappear; in fact, it’s the foundation of the AMP architecture and will be used along with 802.11 and UWB radios, ensuring that the user has the best overall experience. Bringing different high-speed wireless standards under the Bluetooth technology umbrella will make all of them easier to use. “It’s hard enough to get users to figure out how to use something once, but when they have to do that for every technology, it’s just a bigger barrier,” says Linsky. “We are trying to make these multiradio systems into one product and one user experience, instead of having all these different protocol stacks and all these different user interfaces. “We don’t want to make users pair the devices for each radio, and we don’t want to have them discover each one of these radios differently. We want to take care of all that for them – just turn on these radios and use them as needed without any user action.” The Speed/Range Debate Why support both 802.11 and UWB, if either could substantially boost Bluetooth technology’s bandwidth on its own? “From the beginning, we planned on developing a generic high-speed architecture,” explains Linsky. “UWB was the initial AMP we started developing, and in September of 2007 we added 802.11 as a second AMP Like many emerging technologies, UWB hasn’t moved into . products as quickly as everybody thought it would, whereas 802.11 is here now. If you have a product today that has both Bluetooth technology and 802.11 in it, why shouldn’t Bluetooth technology take advantage of the 802.11 radio?” Eventually, UWB’s speed – expected to reach 480 Mbps – and lower average power consumption will make it preferable to 802.11. However, when both radios are available, there could still be a need for 802.11 because of its longer range. “Those are the kinds of trade-offs that application and product designers will end up making,” Linsky notes. 44 | SIGnature | Bluetooth.org http://www.bluetooth.org

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