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Bluetooth Design and Related Technologies

Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology for exchanging data between different electronic devices.

The name “Bluetooth” comes from the Scandinavian king who made peace between Norway, Sweden and Denmark using a technology called the Bluetooth system.

It was first conceived by the company Ericsson in 1994. it intended to design a low power consumption and a low-cost radio on the phone. In 1998 the Ericsson company formed a contract with other companies.

Bluetooth is a short-range link, low energy consumption, and inexpensive wireless electrical device. It uses an irregular frequency and can be used anywhere without any restrictions.

Bluetooth technology devices are equipped with microchips (using a standard personal wireless network (IEEE)).

The first development that Bluetooth made was the removal of many wires in offices and organizations. When two devices want to communicate, they must be equipped with Bluetooth communication wire (equipped with Bluetooth microchip).

Bluetooth is a Packet Based protocol with a Master-slave architecture. Master can communicate with slaves. The Bluetooth device is controlled using a star topology. Up to seven slaves can communicate in the wizard. The owner may be a slave of another owner. All slave devices in the piconet can only connect to one master.

Bluetooth devices use wireless technologies which incorporate antennas to communicate. The circuit board design of Bluetooth devices is designed to use the radio frequencies used by transmitter and receiver chips in the frequency range of 2.4 to 2.48 GHz.

Bluetooth adopted this frequency range as soon as it was recognized as a globally free and unlicensed band.

Interference: One way to avoid interference is to send a very weak signal of about 1 milliwatt, this will limit the power of Bluetooth to about 10m. These weak signals eliminate the possibility of interference with other devices.

Bluetooth uses Frequency Hopping Technology (FHSS), which allows two electrical devices to be zeroed at the same frequency at the same time. Therefore, the transmitter changes the frequency by about 1600 times per second (frequency hopping) and prevents interference.

Design: The device sends no signal in idle mode and consumes no energy. Each Bluetooth device has a universal ID which is unique and called MAC Address.

Bluetooth device modes:

standby: When the device is on but does not send a frequency.

inquiry: When it sends a request to find the device it wants to connect to.

connect: A connection is established between the sending and receiving devices.

transmit: Sending information.

sniff: low power mode of the following device.4,4

hold: The follower device is disabled for a specified time

When the tracking device does not have information to exchange, the main device sends it to sleep mode.

Protocols: The Bluetooth standard has multiple protocols that are unequally grouped into several groups.

Transfer Protocol Group: Allows devices to locate each other. This protocol works in accordance with the Data link layer and the physical OSI layer.

Intermediate Protocol: Includes industry standard protocols such as Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP), Internet Protocol (IP), Information Control Protocol (TPC), and Wireless Request Protocol (WAP).

Advantages: Eliminates the restrictions of wired data transmission, the data transmission speed is reasonable, there is no wave interference (FHSS), and it is automatic and low consumption.

Applications: Build a wireless network between computers in a small environment, establish a wireless connection between computer inputs and outputs, connect mobile phones and headphones wirelessly, communicate with cars and phones, game consoles, Control the Bluetooth speaker wirelessly.

Precautions: Bluetooth is a secure environment by considering safety techniques such as pairing confirmation and encryption.

Bluetooth

Versions:

Version 1: The device has to reveal the hardware address.

Version 1.1: Has better performance. Added support for unencrypted channels.

Version 1.2: Many new devices use this version.

Version 2: (ERD) is three times faster than the previous version.

Version 3: Introduced in 2009, the speed is 24 MB/s.

Version 4: The only version that can communicate with all versions. (bluetooth 4.0, bluetooth 4.2, bluetooth 5.0, etc.)

Conclusion

In a nutshell, Bluetooth, which is a wireless technology, has brought up a faster and easier way of data transmission over short-range distances. In this passage, we discussed different versions of Bluetooth and their features.

Bluetooth Design: Today’s Bluetooth designs are low cost and efficient, there are many readily available certified Bluetooth modules in the market, which can be incorporated into any device, so they can be used in many electronic gadgets and IoT applications.

Even an inexperienced individual can use Bluetooth in his projects.

Author: Kash Hosseini IoT Deployment Manager @ Arshon Technology Inc.