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Wireless Networking Hardware

Bluetooth Plans to Triple Bandwidth 144

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it dept.
stallard writes "Yahoo! news reports that "The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) Monday is releasing a three-year road map for Bluetooth short-range wireless technology that includes a tripling of bandwidth and the ability to multicast signals to seven other users.""
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Bluetooth Plans to Triple Bandwidth More

Bluetooth Plans to Triple Bandwidth

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  • ..But I came out of the article wanting to know more about UWB [uwb.org]

    • Re:ODD.. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Moby Cock ( 771358 )
      When they say the UWB is 5 years out, I call that low level FUD. It's very nearly ready for prime time. Certainly for applications like PAN and such. This is going to compete directly with Bluetooth. The bigger and juicier UWB apps like thru-wall imaging radars are still a few years off. Personally I'm looking forward to UWB. If it all goes to plan my next DVD player will connect to my new TV wirelessly eliminating the need for all household cables. Except extention cords. But given time, we'll get r

      • Re:ODD.. (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Uh, UWB is a complete radio spectrum and power hog (strange for wireless). Bluetooth's design is to maxmimize power efficiency; I hardly see them fulfilling the same niche for a long time.
    • Wikipedia has a good article on UWB [wikipedia.org]

      Also an interesting cached .pdf at Google about An Ultra Wide Bandwidth System for In-Home Wireless Networking [66.102.7.104] has good background on UWB.

  • Short range? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @10:58AM (#10766333)
    Hardly short range. You can increase Bluetooth's range to a full mile, with a simple, inexpensive modification [popsci.com].
    • simple, inexpensive, illegal.
    • You don't need modifications to get acceptable range. I have a 100mW bluetooth transmitter in my laptop that claims a 100 meter range, which I haven't tested fully, but my mouse works plenty fine at 60+ feet from the laptop, and obviously, that's a lot more than necessary for that application.

      • I have a 100m device in my desktop as well. It seems to be capable of that, and yeah, it's quite enough. Plus, 100m isn't non-standard, either. It's just Class 1 Bluetooth, which you will probably never see in a portable device. :-)

        Most other devices IRL are Class 3 (10m), but I've been seeing a few Class 2 (25m) devices around the place. The Gizmondo [gizmondo.com] game console-slash-phone has it, giving it a rather nice range between devices. But it makes me wonder how much power the thing chews through to get tha

  • Do they have better batteries on their roadmap ? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @10:59AM (#10766337)
    Those peski radioes are power hungry ...

  • "from the i'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it dept." (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gentoo Fan ( 643403 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @11:00AM (#10766340) Homepage
    I think the point of Bluetooth is that you don't see the wires. ;)
    • " I think the point of Bluetooth is that you don't see the wires. ;)" CmdrTaco has many talents.

    • Re:"from the i'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it dept." (Score:4, Informative)

      by mpost4 ( 115369 ) * on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @11:06AM (#10766414) Homepage Journal
      It works that well when used correctly, when I am out and about with my cell phone, palm pilot, and the bluetooth head set, it works as stated. I can dial the cell phone with the palm pilot, talk on the head set and hang up with out ever touching the phone and there are no wires involved. Then I can hit the internet from my palm pilot via the cell phone with out any wire again.

      So Bluetooth when used correctly can elimintate wires. The only problem is people try to applie it as a solution for non-existant problems, like you don't really need a bluetooth keyboard and mouse on a home computer, it would be nice, but it not a problem to have wires there.

      • like you don't really need a bluetooth keyboard and mouse on a home computer, it would be nice, but it not a problem to have wires there.

        Actually I bought a Logitech wireless keyboard/mouse combo so I could sit back on the couch or recliner to play games on the TV or LCD projector. The range isn't great but I can move around without wires dangling (or my cat attacking them when they move)

        Bluetooth would be cool for that as the range is much better than the Logitech solution.

        • Logitech actually makes two different wireless keybroad and mouse combo. I use the deNovo.

          The nice thing about having a bluetooth keybroad and mouse is that all wireless devices talk to my PC through the one bluetooth adapter, no need for separate adapters for my phone and palm. I have a bluetooth mouse for my laptop that doesn't require any adapter at all because bluetooth is built into my laptop, no wires and no dongles.

          Now if I could just hack up a way to quickly switch my keyboard and mouse between
      • Er, a bluetooth keyboard makes sense to my wife. And I would advise you against trying to change her mind on this. Just trust me -- it might not make sense to you, or me, but it makes sense to a good half of the population :-/

  • Just SEVEN?! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by hey ( 83763 )
    Talk about aiming low: "signals to seven other users". Of course, as soon was there is a hardcoded limit people will want to exceed it. Why not make it 7 million?! Then you can "podcast". Learn from "640K ought to be enough"

    • Re:Just SEVEN?! (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      i wondered just who were those lucky 7 people!
    • Talk about aiming low: "signals to seven other users". Of course, as soon was there is a hardcoded limit people will want to exceed it. Why not make it 7 million?! Then you can "podcast". Learn from "640K ought to be enough" Well it's possible that you could. One or all of the 7 receiving could potentially re broadcast to seven more and so on...

      • Re:Just SEVEN?! (Score:2, Interesting)

        by pinkocommie ( 696223 )
        This may have something to do with current bluetooth capabilities. Bluetooth based networks currently support piconets with a master and seven slaves. Presume they simply extended this to support multicasting

    • Re:Just SEVEN?! (Score:3, Informative)

      by N Monkey ( 313423 )
      Talk about aiming low: "signals to seven other users". Of course, as soon was there is a hardcoded limit people will want to exceed it.

      I suspect that, given the range for high data rates is relatively low, unless your friends are the types who like cramming into phone boxes or VW beetles, it's probably not going to be a big issue.

    • Re:Just SEVEN?! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Zarhan ( 415465 )
      Seven is the maximum number of Bluetooth devices in a "piconet", so that's where the limit comes from. Multicasting in this context means being able to transmit some data to all the other devices in the piconet ON THE RADIO INTERFACE.

      Simple, but not necessarily practical (or even truthful, not sure) example: You have seven devices connected to a bluetooth basestation using BNEP (Bluetooth Ethernet Emulation). The BS is connected to Internet with some wire. Somebody from "outside world" decides to ping some

    • You forget what Bluetooth is for (Score:5, Informative)

      by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) * on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @11:23AM (#10766584)
      But how are you going to get 7 million people in a volume of 30 feet around you?

      Seven is not too bad considering the purpose of bluetooth - short range cheap (as in low energy and cheap chipsetets) device to device communications.
    • I mean, the main use for Bluetooth is 'toothing. Personally I would consider seven million people somewhat above the enjoyable limit... ;-)

  • BSIG (Score:3, Funny)

    by knifeyspooney ( 623953 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @11:02AM (#10766369)
    Am I the first to say I'm sick of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group and all its porkbarrel politics?
    • As i feel im being relegated to the extreme leftist sloganeer in this group im going to concur and point out that bluetooth is a corporate monopoly on bandwidth in and around 2.4 GHz! This must end for the betterment of the people. Its OUR spectrum anyway, damn the FCC. Further, bluetooth has been increasing in power over the years from the mere 1mW when it was hardly a concern to a WHOPPING 100mW!!!!! This increase cannot be tolerated! DOWN WITH BLUETOOTH!!!!!
      that is all

  • In other news... (Score:3, Funny)

    by RealProgrammer ( 723725 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @11:05AM (#10766396) Homepage Journal
    The Commodore SIG announced plans to make a future announcement of an impending design contest to map the creation of the Commodore 192, which would have triple the capacity of its Commodore 64.

    Commodore SIG said there were thousands of programs available for the C-64 that would run unchanged or with a simple recompile on the new machine. C-SIG predicted the machine would easily outperform designs from competitors Heath and Timex.

  • My new bluetooth headset ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by YetAnotherName ( 168064 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @11:05AM (#10766397) Homepage
    ... and cellphone seem to be doing the job pretty well already with only 10Mbps. At what point do the bandwidth capabilities of an turbo-charged Bluetooth become redundant with WiFi enabled with ZeroConf [zeroconf.org] networking?
    • And by 10 Mbps, you mean a bit under 1 Mbps, right?

      Bluetooth has bandwidth of about 720 kbps, if I recall correctly. This makes it suitable for most applications, but lacking in several others. For example, high quality Bluetooth headphones (not phone quality Bluetooth headsets) would be possible with triple the bandwidth, but aren't really possible with current Bluetooth.

  • Triple the bandwidth with the same bottlenecks (Score:4, Interesting)

    by xThinkx ( 680615 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @11:05AM (#10766409) Homepage

    Whoopedy freakin' dooo...

    I don't need more bandwidth from my phone to my PDA/laptop, I need more bandwidth from my phone to the tower. When GPRS picks up the snail's pace a bit then maybe we can focus on speeding up Bluetooth.

    Or am I the only one who only uses BT for phone-> device communication?

  • I have nothing Bluetooth, what am I missing out on? Is this like the next best thing behind 802.11? What's the big deal already?

  • But isn't Bluetooth dead? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kuwan ( 443684 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @11:08AM (#10766427) Homepage
    From the article:

    The three-year road map will help show that Bluetooth has staying power, Foley said.

    Under the road map, the SIG plans to complete the Bluetooth Version 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) specification by the end of this year, increasing the data rate to 3Mbit/sec., up from 1Mbit/sec. in the current Version 1.2, Foley said. Products are expected to appear with the EDR as early as June 2005, he said. The newer-version products will also be backward-compatible with older versions.

    So it will go from 1 Mbit/sec. to 3Mbit/sec which isn't too bad considering its uses. I mean, really, how much bandwidth does your keyboard and mouse need? Or your cell phone earpiece? I don't think anyone needs to show that Bluetooth has "staying power." It targets a particular market and particular applications and does its job very well. You don't need 1Gbit/sec of bandwidth (which you'll get with UWB) to use your keyboard, mouse, or earpiece.

    I think the most interesting thing is the multicasting to seven other devices. That should allow a lot of fun and interesting applications.

    Free iPod Photo [freephotoipods.com] | Free Flat Screens [freeflatscreens.com] | It really works! [wired.com]

  • Awesome! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    that includes a tripling of bandwidth and the ability to multicast signals to seven

    So now I can hack seven phones or PDAs at once, and do it 3 times faster.

  • great for bluejacking (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kword ( 802483 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @11:09AM (#10766442)
    Does that mean trippling of the range??? I'd sure appreciate a fetaure like that... Here're [bluejackaddict.co.uk] some [bluejackq.com] bluejacking [net-cell.com] links [bluejackings.net]. Also, great general bluetooth info on the WebLogsInc [weblogsinc.com].
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Anybody done development? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by doombob ( 717921 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @11:16AM (#10766521) Homepage
    Has anybody here tried to develop software to run bluetooth hardware? It's enough to make you cry! Has the SIG done anything to try and make developing applications easier?
  • Hmm.... I see our wireless theater coming one step closer.

    3 times the bandwidth => 3+ stereo signals

    I say 3+ because very few people need to broadcast thier music at a full 721kbs.

    multicasting => music from seven points in your house or seven speaker systems throughout it.

    The makings for a wireless rave ;-)
    • It needs the extra bandwidth for uncomrpessed audio, though. In addition to just better sounding audio, you'll get more battery runtime from bluetooth headphone setups that don't have to recompress an analog audio signal.

      For home-based audio, what's wrong with 802.11?

  • Bluetooth [wikipedia.org] plans to triple bandiwdth

    In response to which Lous IV [wikipedia.org] has ruled to triple the CPU speeds!

  • Blue Daisies? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @11:22AM (#10766575) Homepage Journal
    If the 7-peer multicast limit comes from connecting to other Bluetooth phones as the slaves in a BT piconet, can they each connect to 7 other devices in their own piconets? A P2P (Piconet to Piconet) daisy chain? And will those P2P internets exclude the "peripheral" devices, like headphones and storage, that currently fill the piconets?
    • Bluetooth Bittorrents!

      BT^2

    • Yes you can do that, the Bluetooth term for that is Scatternet. Specifically it allows a slave in one piconet to be master in a different piconet. A piconet involves one master and 7 slaves, all Bluetooth devices fill at least one of these roles.

      Personally I hope that next gen consoles have Bluetooth built in for controls. I would be great to have wireless controls+headphones you could just bring to your pals.
  • Any plans to beef up Bluetooth security, to complement these changes?
    • Any plans for you to know what you are talking about? Bluesnarfing is not the fault of the Bluetooth spec. It is the fault of particular implementations of it. Go tickle google and do some reading.
  • once again the BT SIG strategy is to try to be everything to everyone and therefore is less and less useful and relevant.

    get back to the original pitch: simplify connections

    btw, i'm off bluetooth and onto uwb -- check out new uwb blog at http://www.pulsepipe.com/ [pulsepipe.com]
  • i realize that all the emerging wireless options (zigbee, 802.11n, uwb, etc.) are best suited to different conbinations of range, power needs, and bandwidth, but are devices really going to support so many different standards? we're just now seeing bluetooth and wifi together. add three more options, and i fear we'll have a mess.

    "let me give you this pr0n."
    "do you have zigbee2?"
    "no. only uwb and 802.11n."
    "infrared?"
    "are you kidding?"
    [sigh] "just email it to me..."
  • ..as advertised. Especially Nokia seems to be unable to implement bluetooth correctly, and I'm only lucky if I manage to connect my computer to a nokia phone with bluetooth. I've used 3Com-adapters, Socket-adapters and now even the logitech wireless desktop MX with bluetooth (works great btw!) but talk to my nokia? No sorry, that doesn't really work. Bluetooth is great in theory but the interoperability-issues are far too great.
    • Nokia seems to be unable to implement bluetooth correctly

      I use a Nokia 6310i and bluetooth does work great. However I had to get a firmware update on my phone. If you have a 6310i, you need firmware revision 5.50. Other Nokia phones may have similar issues which could be the problem you are facing. If it is under warranty, you can get the upgrade done for free. Don't ask Nokia tech support, they're generally clueless with regard to Bluetooth and will tell you it's your adapter's fault. You might hav
    • This is only true for some of the earlier BT implementations on Nokia. Later models have better support. The support in Sony-Ericsson phones is great in my experience.

  • Awesome! (Score:3, Funny)

    by sootman ( 158191 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @11:48AM (#10766824) Homepage Journal
    ...but I hope they rename the old version to sound faster than the new version [geek.com] so people who have 1st-gen BT gear don't feel sad. Just like DVDs--widescreen, fullscreen... wow, they both sound great!

  • Dodgy... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Psychotext ( 262644 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @11:56AM (#10766888)
    Great, looks like we can now have multiway "Toothing", think of how many more interesting diseases I'll be able to pick up! Sexual deviancy has never been so easy. ;-)

    For those of you that don't know what toothing is (Shame on you!), here are some links:

    Forget dogging, here comes toothing [theregister.co.uk]
    'Toothing' for Hi-Tech Sex with Strangers [headcup.com]
    Biting into the new sex text craze [bbc.co.uk]
  • Does this mean I will get triple the toothing [wired.com] nookie?

  • Bluetooth dead? I hope not... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by singularity ( 2031 ) * <nowalmart@NOSPam.gmail.com> on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @12:16PM (#10767042) Homepage Journal
    I am glad to see Bluetooth development continues. It seems like a technology that was released just a little before its time.

    I have written before on my desire to see a true PAN (Personal Area Network), and there does seem to be some work being done on this idea.

    Instead of going to all-in-one units (the PDA/phone/camera/game machine Slashdot users like to rant against), why not have individual pieces that work together seamlessly?

    Imagine a phone being broken into three pieces - a headset (similar to the Bluetooth ones you are seeing now), the actual phone receiver (for interacting with your provider) that is nothing more than a small matchbook sized piece without any UI, and then a full PDA to contain addresses and phone numbers. Want to call someone? Grab your PDA and hit a phone number. it uses the PAN to tell the phone what to dial, which then uses the PAN to interact with the headset.

    Do not want to carry the PDA that day? Fine, leave it at home. It is always synced with the phone device, which can be controlled using your voice (voice dialing).

    Taking pictures? Listening to music? Why should my digital camera be limited to the 128-512 meg flash card I put into it? I have my iPod/MP3 player with hard drive on me! The camera could use the PAN to save images to the hard drive on the MP3 player. You could even separate the MP3 player from the hard drive, and use the PAN to stream from hard drive to a set of PAN-enabled headphones (or to an MP3 control device hooked up to the headphones).

    So you put pictures you took with your digital camera onto the hard drive. Want to view them? Take out your PDA with its nice screen and view them on that via the PAN.

    Want to get online? Pull out your PDA (or laptop) and have it interact seamlessly with your phone device to get online.

    Walk up to a computer? Have it PAN-enabled so it detects who you are before you sit down (or not, depending on how security-minded you are).

    The advantage of Bluetooth over 802.11[x] is the power constraints. Bluetooth and similar technologies are designed with battery life in mind. I do not want to have to charge every PAN device I have every night to make sure I do not run out of battery just walking around.

    The technology to do all of this currently exists. I think this is the next step Bluetooth (or a Bluetooth replacement) needs to take.

    • I'm using bluetooth daily. You should too! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @02:39PM (#10768600)
      Imagine a phone being broken into three pieces - a headset (similar to the Bluetooth ones you are seeing now), the actual phone receiver (for interacting with your provider) that is nothing more than a small matchbook sized piece without any UI, and then a full PDA to contain addresses and phone numbers. Want to call someone? Grab your PDA and hit a phone number. it uses the PAN to tell the phone what to dial, which then uses the PAN to interact with the headset.

      Why imagine? This is exactly what I do every day. I have a Nokia 6310i, an Palm Tungsten T3 and a bluetooth headset. Furthermore my Thinkpad T30 also has bluetooth built in. Bluetooth is a mandatory feature for me now. Once you start using it, you'll wonder how you did without. It makes it vastly easier for electronic devices to communicate.

      My phone is essentially a portable wireless base station in addition to being a phone. I can check email from either my PDA or laptop and connect through the phone without ever taking it out of my pocket or bag. If I need to sync my pda, no cables are necessary. I can touch dial numbers on my phone directly from my PDA address book. I just tap the number and it dials. I've surfed the web (albiet slowly) from my laptop while riding in a car on the highway and my phone was in the truck. Effectively my PDA and cell phone are a single device but I only have to carry the bits I'm actually going to use.

      I see people compare bluetooth to 802.11X all the time but those folks miss the point. It's not about connecting to the internet. It's a replacement for almost any data-carrying wire. Bluetooth replaces my PDA sync cable, phone sync cable, mouse and keyboard USB cables, phone ear bud cable, and if needed my ethernet cable. Furthermore it could replace printer cables, IR ports, serial cables and several others. Most importantly I can take it anywhere.

      WiFi is almost non-portable only replaces the ethernet cable because that is all it is designed to do. (and it does a good job of it, I'm not bashing WiFi) Bluetooth isn't optimized for what WiFi does so it's slower but also consumes less power and has other uses WiFi does not. If you are comparing WiFi to Bluetooth, you don't understand Bluetooth. Not everyone needs one or the other, but the comparison between them is silly. It's very much like comparing Firewire cables to Ethernet cables and arguing that one is better than the other. The argument just doesn't make sense.

    • It seems like a technology that was released just a little before its time.

      I disagree. The problem with Bluetooth is that it's massively over-specified. And, if anything, a couple of years after its time.

      There are two major wireless specs: Bluetooth and WiFi (aka AirPort, 802.11). Now, in an ideal world, each would be properly adapted and tuned to its own field of use.

      Originally, Bluetooth was seen as a replacement for IrDA (infra-red) and serial connections to and from small devices like PDAs an

  • I'd like to see better security protocols for Bluetooth. Vendors selling Bluetooth devices need to prevent their users from being "bluejacked", "bluesnarfed" and "bluebugged" and DoS attacks on their devices.
  • I use an Apple bluetooth keyboard on my Mac and love it. I don't use their mouse as it is still a one button jobby. Instead I use a non bluetooth optical wireless logitech mouse. When will apple learn that one button isn't enough. Their operating system allready supports a 3 button mouse with a scroll wheel.. duh!

    Nick Powers

  • bandwidth is not data rate (Score:3, Informative)

    by Dr. Null ( 737669 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @12:54PM (#10767436)
    I hate to be picky, but I think everybody is using the word bandwidth to mean data rate.
    Bandwidth has units of Hz and data rate has units of bits/sec. True that increasing the bandwidth of a signal can increase the data rate, but the reverse need no be the case.
    In fact if you read the article they tell us that the increased data rate will be accomplished through changes in the data modulation (most likely by moving from binary phase shift keying, to quadrature phase shift keying, or higher).

    DR. Null
    • This is absolutely correct. To be precise about it, the theoretical maximum data rate of a channel, in bits per second, is equal to W*log2(1+SNR) where W is the bandwidth in hertz, and SNR is the signal to noise ratio.

      In this case, however, they have not changed the bandwidth or power. Notice that the data rate formula (called the Shannon limit) indicates the maximum possible data rate. In practice, the data rate is lower because modulation schemes are not perfect. In this case, they have switched to a be

  • Bluetooth certainly could use a boost in speed - but I see some bigger problems that could use addressing:

    Cost - bluetooth was supposed to be insanely cheap to add to devices. I first read this claim - um - 5 years ago?

    Chatty little bitch - bluetooth is extremely aggressive, and totally pollutes the airwaves when in use. That's all find and dandy considering that it's short range, but it's still not short ENOUGH for the amount of channel saturation that goes on. Try using other wireless technologies ne
    • Have you tried it yourself? Personally I haven't noticed problems using 802.11b/g and Bluetooth in the same room.

      Stuff like Dect phones are way worse at polluting the airwaves. (They are typically not even smart enough to lower signal strength depending on distance.)
  • Do I see bluetooth spam on the rise when this happens? I mean imagine being able to spam 7 people at once instead of singles. Sounds like a pain to me!
  • 101 commets in 12 hours! that says it more than any well considered argument. I guess Bluetooth just doesn't bring out anyone's child-like enthusiasm.

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