What is Bluetooth®?

In the late 900’s, King Harald Bluetooth Gormson united Denmark and Norway in Christianity and ruled both countries as king until deposed by his son. In 1994 the Ericsson company developed a short-range wireless communication protocol which brought about the ability to connect many different uses through one technology. When the technology was officially launched in 1998, the name Bluetooth® was chosen because of the unifying ability of both the late king and the technology.

An early use of Bluetooth was the ability to connect a cell phone to a headset without wires, enabling the headset to be used with a cell phone car kit. Eliminating the wires greatly improved the use of cell phone in vehicles. There are now many other popular and frequently utilized consumer devices that utilize Bluetooth technology, such as the wireless mouse, keyboard, printers, and PDA's.

Wireless communications of game stations such as Sony PlayStation 3and Nintendo Wii also are using Bluetooth technology to allow wireless use of the controllers. Bluetooth also helped replace wired serial communications for test devices, medical equipment, and many GPS devices. It is fast becoming a standard for many devices that previously utilized infra red technology.

Bluetooth versus Wi-Fi

While Bluetooth and Wi-Fi share many of the same abilities, including the frequency on which they operate, there are fundamental differences in the two. The biggest difference is that Wi-Fi operates with significantly more power which dramatically increases its range of use. With Bluetooth, the range is significantly shorter. Additionally, Bluetooth readily sends out a signal telling the electronic world what it is capable of doing and can quickly connect to many devices. Wi-Fi requires a working relationship which must first be established between the different communicating units.

Due to its higher power,longer ranges, and security implementations that can be included in connections, Wi-Fi is much better suited to larger wireless networks. Blue tooth is considerably quicker at locating new connections and becoming connected. A single master blue tooth device can connect to up to seven devices at one time and will allow another 255 devices to be placed in a standby mode. The master can activate standby devices at any time by inactivating a previously active devices.

A blue tooth enabled device will transmit certain specific information in seeking a pairing. The device name and class, a list of services being offered, and technical information are transmitted in hopes of finding a match for its offerings.

The Bluetooth® word mark and logos are owned by the Bluetooth SIG, Inc. and any use of such marks is under license. Other trademarks and trade names are those of their respective owners."