Why All Those Wires?
There are many different ways of connecting technological devices together. One method is called Bluetooth technology. Bluetooth has become increasingly popular in recent years for many reasons. To communicate with each other, devices utilize wires, cables, connectors, signals, electrical wires, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet cables are often used. The big draws of Bluetooth are that none of these are needed since it is wireless and automatic.
How Bluetooth Networking Operates
Before communication begins, devices determine how they will speak to each other.†Devices with Bluetooth technology transmit data through low-power radio waves. The radio-frequency band it communicates on has been set aside for industrial, medical and scientific devices. Familiar devices that also use this frequency are baby monitors and garage door controllers. In designing these devices, the way the frequency systems work ensures that interference between them won’t interrupt functioning.
Wireless Infrared Communication
Another way of connecting wirelessly is by using infrared communication. This refers to light waves of a lower frequency than human eyes can receive and interpret. A setback to infrared communication is that it is a line of sight technology. This means a device needs to be pointed directly at the system it’s communicating with in order to function. Advantages to infrared communications are that they are considerably reliable and affordable.
Bluetooth System Interference
In connecting wirelessly with Bluetooth, systems create a personal-are network (PAN), or piconet for you. These networks can take up a room no more distance than that between a cell phone in someone’s pocket. Once a piconet has been established, the Bluetooth frequencies will randomly jump in unison to avoid other piconets in the same room or nearby. This allows for multiple Bluetooth systems in the same location to operate simultaneously. A technique called spread-spectrum frequency hopping is also used to limit interference.
Spread-Spectrum Frequency Hopping
Spread-spectrum frequency hopping makes it unlikely that more than one device will transmit at the same time as another and on the same frequency. Using this technique, a device will use various random frequencies within a specified range. It will change frequencies as rapidly as 1,600 times each second. Other devices using the same frequency hopping strategy are very unlikely to land on the same frequency at the same time. If two devices should land on the same frequency, it would last for only a fraction of a second. The devices would still largely remain uninterrupted.
A Networking Standard That Works
Bluetooth technology can help to streamline the complex process of connecting things technologically every day. It eliminates the need for any extra wires, cables, and frustration of connecting electronic devices. Many Bluetooth devices also offer security where users can choose to control and allow other devices to send data. Bluetooth technology has several helpful features that can simplify tasks in our daily lives.