E-toys Unite!
Bluetooth will allow wireless connections

By Herb Brody

Help is on the way. A consortium that includes most of the leading computer and telecommunications companies is devising a standard that will enable all manner of gadgetry to communicate across short distances through radio waves. The initial specification for the “Bluetooth” standard is expected to come out in July, and Bluetooth-enabled products should be on the market in the first half of 2000.

Driving the effort are Bluetooth’s founding members Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba. About 650 other companies are now participating in the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, developing the hardware and standards that will make the idea a reality. Members of this consortium work under an arrangement that gives them royalty-free usage of any Bluetooth intellectual property developed by another group member. “To make this a de facto standard, there needs to be no licensing fees to companies that use it,” explains Simon Ellis, marketing manager for Intel’s mobile and handheld products.

Bluetooth (the moniker refers to a 10th-century Danish king) is not a substitute for other forms of wireless communications. It operates over a very short rangeu drive, using commonly available text-to-speech software. Bluetooth-equipped keyboards, mice, printers and other peripherals would dispense with the need for many of those annoying connection cables.

Bluetooth will operate in a microwave portion of the radio spectrum (between 2.4 and 6 gigahertz) that is now used by some microwave ovens as well as an assortment of industrial, scientific and medical equipment. This is an “unlicensed” swath of spectrum, meaning anyone who wants can use it. To avoid interference problems, Bluetooth will employ a frequency-hopping technology. Devices in proximity with one another establish an ad hoc network in which the transmission frequency changes 1,600 times a second in a programmed sequence, in effect dodging potential interference.

Does the world really need another networking technology? Analysts say yesmore significant for a cell phone or pager. If manufacturers hit that target, Bluetooth could “revolutionize the way people use” information devices, says Phillip Redmond of the Yankee Group in Boston.

Bluetooth is not the only game in town for short-range wireless connections. Infrared links can serve much the same purpose - and are being built into a growing number of computers and peripherals. Unlike Bluetooth, however, infrared communication requires that the devices point at each other. Because of infrared’s line-of-sight constraint, some predict, Bluetooth will prevail. Unlike Bluetooth, however, infrared communication requires that the devices point at each other. Because of infrared’s line-of-sight constraint, some predict, Bluetooth will prevail.

Herb Brody is a senior editor at Technology Review.

Links

The official Bluetooth Web site
Comparison between Bluetooth and infrared links