Bluetooth

The other day I was swapping pictures with someone using my phone. I switched on the Bluetooth and hey presto! I could see her phone and receive pictures and send pictures to my laptop. All this thanks to Bluetooth.

To put in simplistically, Bluetooth is a wireless standard that allows different devices (phone, laptop etc.) that are Bluetooth enabled to send data across short distances. That is both the advantage and the disadvantage of the technology. 

The short range makes it ideal to set up PAN (Personal Area Networks) comprising of a few devices connected together in a peer to peer fashion. There is no overhead of a central server needed to manage this network. The cost of using a Bluetooth device is lesser compared to the cost of a a WiFi network or the inconvenience of a fixed point network like a LAN (Local Area Network).

The disadvantage is that the range itself proves to be a determining factor with connectivity fading rapidly as distance increases. The amount of data that you can transmit is also less as the device/software has to chunk the data into smaller bits and frequency hop using a secure, unlicensed bandwidth called ISM 2.4 GHz (Industrial, Scientific and Medical). There are efforts underway to improve this on many fronts and has led to several versions of Bluetooth, up to Bluetooth 3.0 standard. 

The other rather cute factor with Bluetooth is that its a standard decided by a consortium of companies called the Special Interest Group (SIG) involved in various sectors like IBM and Motorola. The gain for them is that they achieve interoperability which in today's networked world means the key to survival.