The Rise Of Bluetooth: The Forgotten Child Of Wireless Connectivity

When we hear the word ¡®Bluetooth¡¯ the first thing that comes to mind is the wireless pairing of Bluetooth headsets with our phones, allowing wireless connectivity.

Wikipedia

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And as we all know, this technology isn't just limited to smartphones and headsets -- we use Bluetooth to connect to a car¡¯s audio system wirelessly, and today even our TV remotes come with Bluetooth in them.

However, while we¡¯ve been seeing this technology on our mobile phones since as early as 2001, it actually came into existence several years before that.

Birth of Bluetooth

The technology for the Bluetooth standard was originally conceived by Dr Jaap Haartsen at Ericsson all the way back in 1994, although its initial creation as a ¡®short-link¡¯ radio technology was set in motion by Nils Rydbeck, CTO at Ericsson Mobile.

Haartsen was actually working on developing an indoor wireless communication system with an idea to replace RS-232 telecommunication cables by using short-range UHF radio waves between 2.4 and 2.485 GHz. These cables were large and power-consuming, and of course, wired, so a wireless alternative was desperately needed.

RS232 Port: Computer Hope

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While the frequency on which Bluetooth runs is similar to that of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth was designed to be for a far shorter range as well as consume not as much power as Wi-Fi does.

The first-ever consumer product using Bluetooth was introduced to the world in 1999 at COMDEX -- which was a hands-free mobile headset. And soon after, Bluetooth 1.0 was introduced, where more and more devices adopted it (more on that later).

Haartsen set up the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) in 1988 which initially only included Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba, however, today the group has over 30,000 member companies.

Why was it named Bluetooth?

In case you were wondering how this technology was named Bluetooth, well it was actually coined by Jim Kardach of Intel in 1997, who at the time was reading Frans G. Bengtsson's The Long Ships, a historical novel about Vikings and the 10th-century Danish king Harald Bluetooth.

Harald Bluetooth was known to have united the disparate Danish tribes into a single kingdom, thus Kardach chose the name signifying its wireless connection platform would do something similar, but for communication protocols.

In fact, Bluetooth¡¯s logo is essentially a bind rune inspired by Nordic mythology, which fuses Younger Futhark runes Hagall and Bjarkan -- the initials of King Harald Bluetooth.

Phones adopting Bluetooth

Even though mobile phones weren¡¯t one of the primary mediums of its application, they truly embraced the Bluetooth revolution, with Sony Ericsson T36 becoming the first phone to feature it in 2000. However, it soon got cancelled and what truly got the mass appeal was its successor the Ericsson T39.

Ericsson T39: Old Handphone/Blogger

Soon after, other brands followed and almost all of the phones had it as a feature that offered wireless calling in the beginning, but with future iterations of Bluetooth (when the network started to get more mature), we saw more applications, such as connecting phones with computers, sharing files with computer and other phones supporting Bluetooth and several others.

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Evolution of Bluetooth

What¡¯s surprising is that Bluetooth 1.0 offered peak data speeds of just 721 kbps (although the actual data rate would be usually slower than this) and connections could reach farther than 10 metres.

Bluetooth 2.0 came with EDR (enhanced data rate) that allowed sharing of data up to a whopping 2.1 Mbps and this is something that has even stuck today, with Bluetooth 5.3. However, the data speeds range from 125 kbps (for applications that aren¡¯t that data-heavy) up to 2Mbps for lower power consumption.

Jabra

Today, you have the option of connecting to multiple devices simultaneously and instantly swapping between devices. Moreover, Bluetooth devices today can be kept connected for the whole day without causing a massive toll on battery life, with Bluetooth Low Energy modes seen post-Bluetooth 4.0 (it can be powered using a coin cell).

And even the variety of products making use of Bluetooth has diversified considerably. From cool wireless headsets to smart wear gadgets to IoT devices that control devices in our home right from our smartphone, it does it all.

Unsplash

According to a report by GSMArena, By 2003 Bluetooth was shipping 1 million BT-enabled devices every week. This number only grew to 3 million a week in 2004 and then to 5 million in 2005. By 2006 the world already had over 1 billion Bluetooth devices and 10 million new ones joining the list every week.

But it looks like Bluetooth could soon be on the verge of going extinct.

Also Read: Bluetooth Headsets Will Offer Active Noise Cancellation, Voice Assistant Feature At Lower Costs

Ultra Wide Band: Will this be the future?

Bluetooth¡¯s next awaited version -- 6.0 could be just around the corner, however, today it faces tough competition against a new wireless radio technology that promises to be stronger and more power-efficient.

Dubbed UWB or Ultra-wideband, it¡¯s capable of high-bandwidth communications (>500MHz) over a short range with support for a large section of the radio spectrum. We¡¯ve seen Apple use UWB with its iPhone 11 series smartphones as well as its Series 5 Apple Watch and even AirTags.

Apple

Even Samsung introduced UWB connectivity with Samsung Galaxy Note 20 and S21 Ultra and S21+ with its Smart Tag tracker. The FiRA Consortium came into existence in August 2019 in order to develop interoperable UWB ecosystems and brands like Oppo, Xiaomi, Samsung are currently a part of it.

In fact, UWB technology also allows phones to be used as car keys, eliminating the need for physical card-style keys in the smart cars of today. In fact, Apple did showcase something similar at its iPhone 12 launch event with BMW vehicles.

UWB is also ideal for PC peripherals, wireless monitors, and wireless printers and is perfect for radio-frequency sensitive environments like hospitals.

It¡¯ll be interesting to see what Bluetooth 6.0 brings in store for users and whether it¡¯s able to be more efficient and reliable as UWB.

Do you think Bluetooth 6.0 will bring better advancements to maintain its stance in the industry or do you think UWB will be the future? Tell us in the comments below and keep visiting Indiatimes.com for the latest in science and technology news and updates.