Bluetooth and 802.15.1

Bluetooth is a wireless personal area networking (WPAN) technology that operates in the 2.4 GHz frequency band. Developed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (founded by Nokia, Ericsson, IBM, Intel, and Toshiba), Bluetooth is named for the Danish King Harald Blåtand (Bluetooth) who unified Denmark and Norway in the tenth century. Like King Bluetooth, the Bluetooth standard intends to unify, in this case the telecom and computing industries.

Bluetooth is a complementary standard to 802.11x, Bluetooth devices peacefully coexist and in some cases interoperate with Wi-Fi devices. Bluetooth doesn’t compete with Wi-Fi standards; its range is too short and its throughput speed is too slow (1 Mbps).

Bluetooth allows users to connect many different computing and communications devices easily and simply without cables. Wi-Fi devices replace Ethernet cables, and Bluetooth connects peripherals without all those annoying cables. Keyboards, optical mice, printers, digital cameras, and PDAs that employ Bluetooth are already available.

802.15.1 standard is fully compatible with the existing Bluetooth spec. IEEE created 802.15.1 around a licensed portion of the Bluetooth specification. As Bluetooth develops further, the IEEE will likely incorporate these changes into the 802.15.1 family of standards.