Part I: Introducing Bluetooth

At the height of his powers Harald Bluetooth, a 10th century Viking king, ruled over both Denmark and Norway. He united the two kingdoms for the first time, bringing a peace that lasted 25 years. When Ericsson sought to name an emerging technology that could unite the worlds of computing and telecommunications—hopefully for far longer—the colorful king was an apt choice. The technology in question is known as Bluetooth.

In 1998, Ericsson Mobile Communications, Intel, IBM, Toshiba, and Nokia Mobile Phones—representing the diverse market support needed to generate support for the new protocol—formed a Special Interest Group (SIG) to promote and define Bluetooth. Today, more than 1900 companies have joined the SIG to work for an open Bluetooth standard. Already thousands of developers are working on Bluetooth devices for what has been described as "the world's fastest-growing technology."

Bluetooth allows a variety of devices—not only conventional PCs, laptops, mobile phones and peripherals, but also PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) and other next-generation emerging portable devices—to communicate without cables or hard wiring. This is its initial advantage, but the emergence of Bluetooth has far wider implications, as Chris Angell, senior consultant with telecommunications consultancy Intercai Mondiale, says, "Much of the future's communication will be done between computers, passing messages on our behalf and sometimes on their own behalf. Bluetooth will provide the glue to stick the communication systems of the 21st century together."

Thanks to Bluetooth, a device has a wireless connection to its environment—freed from the confines of its cord and socket, yet retaining its ability to communicate with other machines. Even more powerful, perhaps, is the addition of wire-free network connectivity for PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) as they evolve from standalone address and scheduling tools, to mobile communicators, integrating data and voice communications with handheld computing. The openness of the standard ensures that devices can operate with other Bluetooth applications and equipment, regardless of the manufacturer.

The technology is not designed to compete with next generation mobile systems (3G:UMTS/GPRS), but to support them. Network operators can take advantage of Bluetooth's low cost and ubiquity for short-range transmission—up to 10-feet with simple low power (0-dBm) handheld devices and up to 100-feet with higher power (20-dBm) base stations. In addition, its moderate bandwidth (data can be sent up to 1-Mbit/s) and self-organizing abilities should be seamless to the user.

Bluetooth chips will evolve quickly to consume a minimum amount of power and cover a very small footprint—ideal for the often tiny devices into which they will be placed.

Bluetooth is ideal for organizations whose office location and layout change rapidly or mobile workers who only use an office part-time and want quick connection to the Internet or email. Moreover, whole new market segments marrying mobility with cost-effective communications will emerge: imagine a café offering Bluetooth connectivity—customers could use their devices to send email, surf the Web, or work from a PC or PDA without the high cellular charges they would incur today.

Traditional methods of inter-devices communication are cables, which often involve complex software configuration, and infrared light, which does not require a cable, but needs line-of-sight. Bluetooth eliminates those problems, avoiding cables and enabling communication between several devices, sufficient to support a small LAN, for example. While Bluetooth's cordlessness is a distinct benefit and, for many industry players, this is the catalyst for pursuing its development, it has much greater potential as a platform for advanced applications.

The goal for Bluetooth and the many leading industry players supporting it, is to enable intercommunication between any devices, where appropriate. For example, Red-M aims to take Bluetooth beyond its initial concept as a simple short-range cable replacement technology and enable a whole new class of mobile communication applications. Already its 3000AS and 1000AP platforms incorporate a high power, high sensitivity radio design that provides coverage of up to 100-feet per access server or access point.

Small numbers of users can use Bluetooth to create their own Personal Area Network. For example, Bluetooth could enable a group of people with laptops to view and store a presentation being run on a single laptop. Jeff Parker, technical director at ICL e-innovations, says, "It is estimated that there could be 34 million Bluetooth-enabled laptops by the end of 2003."

Bluetooth offers a number of advantages to device designers:

• Cost—A sophisticated radio interface is more complex, but more flexible, than the type of infrared interface common today on mobile phones and PCs. It is vital that the target price per unit for implementing a Bluetooth interface is as low as possible. At $15 per unit, it is currently twice that of infrared and DECT due to small volumes, but will fall if—as seems highly likely—every home, every office is expected to run numerous Bluetooth-enabled devices. As predictions for this technology are as high as 2.1 billion devices in 2005, economics dictate that they will become cheap to make. Moreover, the radio technology will be integrated into other micro-controllers, so that for a small premium, devices will be built with the technology already inside.
  
  
• Size—Small is not only beautiful, it is essential when it comes to implementing Bluetooth on a wide range of devices. Reduced size means low power consumption, avoiding bulky power sources. It is achievable and feasible on a single chip and several RF components, so should be easy to install; its low power output and sophisticated power conservation design ensures minimum power consumption.
  
  
• Development—Cable-free communications are only the start in exploiting Bluetooth's potential. It is far more than a compact, low-maintenance, wireless transport mechanism. At the core of Bluetooth's specification development is an openness designed to expand its possibilities, achieved through sharing ideas—the open source—directly related to Bluetooth's specification. This fosters a willingness to exploit the possibilities—most of them have yet to be thought of, yet alone explored—safe in the knowledge that the intellectual property of individual applications remains the property of the developer.
  
  
• LANs and WANs—Bluetooth is not to be viewed as a replacement for conventional LANs, although it can, however, provide the final connection to the LAN through Bluetooth ports. They will allow wireless access from anywhere within the coverage area of those ports. Similarly, Bluetooth is in no way intended to replace the main backbone networks that make up WANs—it is a local animal only—but, once again, can provide wireless access to a WAN wherever it is needed.
  
  
• Bluetooth's relationship with 3G—National networks are designed to deliver communications on the move or wireless to any location, whereas interconnection between devices in close proximity to one another is far better served by Bluetooth. The point of interworking between the two comes when a call (service or function of some kind) from one undefined location via the larger telephony service needs to be delivered to another undefined location and then distributed in that location. The larger cellular network will do the long-distance delivery and Bluetooth the local distribution, via a user's 3G/cellular handset/terminal with in-built Bluetooth transceiver.

  The same will apply for local delivery of wired services, especially in the short term. In a Bluetooth-zoned shopping mall, a handheld device user could access the Internet over a 1-Mbit/s Bluetooth wireless link to a network service over DSL (Digital Subscriber Line broadband local loop technology), so delivering the 3G mobile usage model today in open spaces, such as malls, airports, restaurants, and motorway services.

Cellular phones are intended for speech and are not optimized for delivering data—they are just telephones, after all. Enhancements to GPRS (so-called 2.5G) will allow data to be carried more easily and at higher bit-rates to the 9.6-kbit/s of GSM (somewhere between 28.8- and 64-kbit/s) and even as packets rather than circuit-switched data. 3G—known globally as IMT 2000 and UMTS across Europe—is designed to carry packet data, with speech carried simply as a particular type of data application. 3G will deliver multiple services according to different bandwidth requirements—simultaneously if necessary—with data rates measured in hundreds of kbit/s.

There has been much discussion of potential applications such as vending machines calling for supplies, cars sending service requirements to garages, a dishwasher informing the householder via an email that needs more water softener, communications between PCs and PDAs and even wireless LANs. All could, theoretically, be delivered via 2.5G/3G. But each device would need an expensive transceiver and base stations would have to have sufficient capacity to cope with the traffic volumes. Most of that traffic would be local... much of it within 10-m from start to finish if VCRs, TVs, and kitchen appliances are included. This is ideal for Bluetooth—it can provide all that local interconnection, plus a gateway to national networks as and when needed.

Moreover, Bluetooth will become commercial in time to catch the 2.5G wave and, of course, the emergence of 3G systems, helping them to deliver a wide range of applications. A far cry, indeed, from simply replacing a cable.

Rudolf Schnetler, CIO of Sanlam Health comments: "Bluetooth will change the way we work and communicate into the future, and will have a major impact on m-commerce.