Bluetooth innovation
...nless file transfer to synchronous connection oriented voice traffic (Capen, 2004). The connection is automatic and almost instantaneous, faster than pulling and connecting a cable. It typically ranges to about 10 meters so it can eliminate cables between personal devices. In other words, you can connect your notebook computer or PDA, for example, to your cell phone and use it as a modem. Table 2: Ericsson Bluetooth Development Timeline (www.ericsson.com) Market Setting As mentioned earlier, Bluetooth technology is mostly utilized in portable appliances such as laptops, PDAs, mobile phones, headsets …etc. This is just one of the three segments of Bluetooth based applications. The second segment of applications is its use as access points which enable hundreds of Bluetooth units to access the wired network in places such as theaters, stadiums, conferences, pavilions …etc. (Brooks, 2004). The third and final segment of applications is the low cost, effortless and instant connection of ad hoc networks. Segments one and two are probably the two most commonly heard of. However, the main question still remains, why would Bluetooth be an attractive technology? Christina Bjorknader, a Marketing and Communication Manager for L.M. stated that “you could have a pair of mufflers – the headphones over your ears and be mowing the lawn outside, listening to your walkman when your phone rings inside and automatically stops the music to tell you that there is a call which you can then take … Depending on whether your PDA has voice capabilities you could even check your calendar while on the phone, call and add appointments or make a change. Once you’re done with the call, the phone will simply restart the music from where you left off and you then finish mowing the lawn, all without taking your hands off the mower”. Bluetooth is the kind of technology that promises to realize the vision of lights turning off, alarm systems activating themselves and you car starting itself as you leave the house (Martin & Freed, 2004). According to Allied Business Intelligence Group, a steady growth of devices communicating via Bluetooth wireless technology will see 1.4 network nodes in use by 2005, compared to just 56 million nodes this year, which will generate revenue from Bluetooth chips of 5.3 billion by 2005 (Rondeau, D'Souza, Mark, & Sweeny, 2004). Even considering the delays that have been experienced, and the economy problems this year, this emerging market will shine. The Bluetooth enabled equipment shipments will still climb to 955 million units in 2005. Although Bluetooth is phone-centric both in its conception and its expected market penetration, the specification accommodates a wide variety of devices that can benefit from short-range wireless connectivity. As mentioned earlier, the main reason for developing Bluetooth was to eliminate the need for wires connecting devices in a close proximity. The goal has been accomplished and manufacturers are currently selling products designed to this. Some of these manufacturers include Microsoft, Motorola, and Logitech. Most computer peripherals, mice, keyboards, and printers are Bluetooth compatible. In most cases, a transceiver plugs into a computer USB port which allows these devices to function. Now desktops can be clutter free and areas behind the desk can as well. The wireless headset has also been developed. Cell phone users can now speak hands free and wire free when they have a Bluetooth enabled phone and matching headset. The mobile computing industry is now partially Bluetooth enabled. Some laptop manufacturers are now including the Bluetooth chip built into their units. This allows laptops to be synced with desktop computer with great ease. Most PDAs also have Bluetooth. This makes syncing with PDAs easier and will give them a whole new function in the future. Microsoft windows XP recently developed its new service pack 2 which includes support for Bluetooth and Bluetooth is available on a selected distribution basis in Windows XP SP1. In addition one-third of new U.S. mobile phones this year will come with Bluetooth capabilities, according to Allied Business Intelligence (Rysavy, 2004). Technology Push, Market Pull & Success Factors To truly understand how technologies such as Bluetooth, IrDAs, WiFi …etc., came about, wireless technology has to be understood. Wireless transmission is the backbone for all the technologies we have today. It is the driving force behind changes in telecommunication. Although most think the computer revolution or the Internet revolution as the driving force behind changes in the way we live and work, but in fact, the greatest and most far-reaching revolution of the last 100 years or so has been neither of them, it’s been wireless technology, the capability to send information up to thousand of miles invisibly through the air. Without wireless transmission there would be no broadcast mass media, no radio, no television, no instant communication via satellites, no Bluetooth. In fact, many of the poorer countries on earth it’s easier to communicate using cell phones than over traditional telephones or landlines because of the immense cost involved in stringing telephone wires over vast distances (Gralla, 2002). The wireless transmission history goes back to a little more than 100 years ago when an Italian physicist and inventor named Guglielmo Marconi was successfully able to transmit information over radio waves. Every second of our lives, we are surrounded by waves of energy in which some are visible but the vast majorities are invisible. These waves are created in many different ways such as light and colors that are visible and created by the sun, others such as radio and television signals, microwaves, remote-control infrared rays, and cell phone transmissions are man made and invisible. All these different waves of energies gathered are referred to as the electromagnetic spectrum, which consists of two major concepts: Frequency and Wavelength. Wavelength refers to the length of the energy wave. Frequency on the other hand, refers to the number of times or cycles per second that wave cycle occur and are usually measured in hertz. One cycle is 1 Hz (Gralla, 2002). So Bluetooth for instance uses spread-spectrum radio in the 2.4 GHz band, which is a very high frequency rate. Generally, higher frequency waves travel shorter distances than do lower frequency waves, which is why they’re commonly used for cellular telephone networks. Since these waves don’t travel great distances, the same bandwidth can be used for different calls in areas relatively close to each other and the calls won’t interfere with one another. There are two main standards for wireless networking: one is Bluetooth and the other known by the unromantic name IEEE 802.11 and although they compete with each other they actually are used for somewhat different purposes. The capability to network wirelessly with Bluetooth is built into a chip and the chip is put into a device. Because of that, it is expected to become a low-cost way to network various devices. Bluetooth is an ad hoc network, which means that not only do the devices find each other on their own but they can communicate directly with each other without having to go through a central device, such as a server or a network access point which is why it is referred to as a peer-to-peer network. Bluetooth networks can’t be very large; if there are too many devices on one that try to communicate with one another, the network and devices can crash (Gralla, 2002). Because of that, and because Bluetooth wasn’t devised only for computers, another kind of wireless network has become popular and that is the 802.11, which is well suited for working with the Ethernet local area networks that are popular in many corporations. Both 802.11 and Bluetooth can be used either at home or in corporations and in fact, there is no reason why the two technologies can coincide. On one hand Bluetooth can be used for home entertainment whereas 802.11 can be used for computers even though Bluetooth is suitable for data transmission as well. Below are the detailed steps of how Bluetooth applications work: 1. Each Bluetooth device has a microchip embedded in it that can send and receive radio signals. It can send both data and voice. The radio signals are send and received in the 2.4 GHz radio band, in the industrial Scientific, and Medical (ISM) band. Inside the chip is a software called a link controller that does the actual work of identifying other Bluetooth devices and sending and receiving data. 2. The Bluetooth device constantly sends out a message, looking for other Bluetooth devices within its range. 3. When a Bluetooth device finds another device, or more than one device, within its range, they go through a series of communications that establish whether they should communicate with one another. Not all devices will communicate, for example, a stereo might not communicate with a telephone. Devices determine whether they should communicate with one another by examining each other’s Bluetooth profiles that are coded into the devices’ hardware by the hardware manufacturer. Profiles contain information about the device itself, what it is used for, and with what devices it can communicate. If devices determine they should communicate with one another, they establish a connection. The connection of two or more Bluetooth devices is called a piconet. 4. When the connection is established, the devices can communicate with one another. You could use a Bluetooth device to access information from the Internet, if the device from which it’s accessing the data is connected to the Internet. For example, you could have a home network with Bluetooth capability and connect a palmtop computer to the Internet by connecting through the home Network. 5. If there are many Bluetooth devices or piconets near each other, their radio signals could conceivably interfere with one another. To be sure that doesn’t happen, Bluetooth uses spread-spectrum frequency hopping. In this technique, the transmitters change their frequency constantly approximately 1600 times per second, this way the chance of interference is very small. (Gralla, 2002) The prospect of over one billion mobile phones was the primary motive for inventing Bluetooth. When most consumers on the planet have a mobile phone capable of initiating commercial transactions, then providing these phones with short-range wireless interface opened vast new markets for compatible electronic devices ranging from cordless headsets to wireless vending machines. Each device is equipped with a microchip transceiver that transmits and receives in a previously unused frequency of 2.45 GHz ISM (industrial scientific medicine) band. In a vast majority of countries around the world the range of this frequency band is 2400 – 2483.5 MHz. Some countries however have national limitation in the frequency range (Dursch, Yen, & Shih, 2004). In order to comply with these limitations, special frequency hopping algorithms have been specified for such countries. This brings us to the future of Bluetooth which is very good because it meets a basic need of connectivity in close proximity. In addition it is the result of initiatives of nine leading communications and computer industry vendors including companies like 3-COM, Ericsson, Lucent, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, Toshiba …etc. Since the formation of the original group, more than 1800 manufacturers worldwide have joined the initiative worldwide. In addition, as a result of the success of Wireless Application Protocol, adoption of smart phones and handheld devices, Bluetooth will have tremendous effects on everyday life. Bluetooth is one of the key technologies that can make the mobile information society possible, blurring the boundaries between home, the office, and the outside world. The seamless connectivity promised by Bluetooth makes it possible to explore a range of interactive and highly transparent personalized services which were even difficult to dream of because of the complexity involved in making various devices talk to each other. Already, many Bluetooth pilot products have rolled into the market backed by big vendors, which is a very healthy sign for the acceptance of the technology. The support for Bluetooth is not only limited to companies developing Bluetooth enabled products; it can have far reaching impacts on many other industries as well. Its adoption is expected to grow the market for personal mobile devices and indirectly increase airtime usage for wireless data. Over the long term, manufacturers will also benefit from the ability to replace multiple connection ports with a single Bluetooth module gaining the economy at the production level (Brooks, 2004). And as far as connectivity, speed and security is concerned, Bluetooth technology is designed to be fully functional even in very noisy radio environments and its voice transmissions are audible under sever conditions. The technology provides a very high transmission rate of 1 megabyte per second (up to 2 Mbps in the second generation of the technology) for high speed communication, the 1 Mbps connection is devised between a 64 kbps connection for synchronous voice and a 768 Kbps connection for data (Feder, 2004). Bluetooth appeals to device manufact...