Bluetooth
October 22, 2008
In 1994, the L. M. Ericsson Company became interested in connecting its mobile phones to other devices (e.g., PDAs) without cables. Together with four other companies (IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba), it formed a SIG (Special Interest Group. i.e., consortium) to develop a wireless standard for interconnecting computing and communication devices and accessories using short-range, low-power, inexpensive wireless radios. The project was named Bluetooth, after Harald Blaatand (Bluetooth) II (940-981), a Viking king who unified (i.e., conquered) Denmark and Norway, also without cables.
Although the original idea was just to get rid of the cables between devices, it soon began to expand in scope and encroach on the area of wireless LANs. While this move makes the standard more useful, it also creates some competition for mindshare with 802.11. To make matters worse, the two systems also interfere with each other electrically. It is also worth noting that Hewlett-Packard introduced an infrared network for connecting computer peripherals without wires some years ago, but it never really caught on in a big way.
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Undaunted by all this, in July 1999 the Bluetooth SIG issued a 1500 page specification of V1.0. Shortly thereafter, the IEEE standards group looking at wireless personal area networks, 802.15, adopted the Bluetooth document as a basis and began hacking on it. While it might seem strange to standardize something that already had a very detailed specification and no incompatible implementations that needed to be harmonized, history shows that having an open standard managed by a neutral body such as the IEEE often promotes the use of a technology. To be a bit more precise, it should be noted that the Bluetooth specification is for a complete system, from the physical layer to the application layer. The IEEE 802.15 committee is standardizing only the physical and data link layers the rest of the protocol stack falls outside its charter.
Even though IEEE approved the first PAN standard 802.15.1, in 2002, the Bluetooth SIG is still active busy with improvements. Although the Bluetooth SIG and IEEE versions are not identical, it is hoped that they will soon converge to a single standard.
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October 22nd, 2008 at 6:31 pm
[...] their notebook computers for reading e-mail, surfing the Web or something else. In contrast, the Bluetooth V1.1 specifications names 13 specific applications to be supported and provides different protocol stacks for each one. [...]