If you’ve never hooked up a computer and several other peripherals, a television and a DVD player, or run telephone extensions through your house, then you may not know how bad these wires can be. Isn’t a wise idea if you would have all these electronics connected to share whatever signals are needed without any cables? Bluetooth: that’s all you need. This is a simple way printers, cellphones, digital cameras, PCs, and other gadgets to connect together over short distances using radio wave technology.
What’s Bluetooth?
You always use wireless communication even if you don’t realize it. Television sets as well as radio receivers have been designed to pick up programs beamed into radio waves transmitted hundreds and even thousands of kilometers away. Cordless phones implement the same technology. They carry calls from your handset to a base station. In case you use Wi-Fi, your PC sends and receives a steady stream of data to the internet router, which is wired to the net.
Bluetooth is a similar radio technology, but has been designed for short distance communication: about 10m or 30ft. You can use it to download pics from a camera to your PC, link a wireless mouse to your laptop, or connect your hand-free headset to your phone. Linking your cellphone to your hand-free headset can help you drive safely while you’re on a call. Electronics designed with Bluetooth connectivity have on-board radio receivers and transmitters that simultaneously send and receive wireless radio signals to other Bluetooth enabled devices.
Bluetooth distance coverage
Plug-in adapters can be used to make older devices Bluetooth enabled. The plug-in adapters come in the form of USB sticks, laptop cards etc. The power of the receivers and transmitters (radio antennas) dictate the rage of operation of a Bluetooth enabled device. Bluetooth enabled devices fall under three categories: Category 1 are the most powerful and are designed to operate to a maximum range of 100m, category 2 are medium range devices and operate to a maximum distance of10m, category 3 carry the weakest radio waves and operate to not more than 1m.
How Bluetooth works and transmission rate
Bluetooth sends or receives waves in a 79 frequency band, which is centered on 2.45GHz. However, this is with the exception of radio,television, cellphones, and other bands reserved for scientific, industrial, and medical devices. Therefore, you don’t have to worry of interfering with someone’s life support machine by using a Bluetooth enabled device at home. Short-range transmission is what makes Bluetooth a favorable form of communication. Bluetooth connectivity uses virtually no power, and is more secure as opposed to wireless networks with long-range operation.
Bluetooth enabled devices detect and connect automatically to each other and a maximum of eight devices can communicate at once. The communication is free of interruptions as each paring uses a different frequency from the 79 channels available. In order to reduce the risk of interference from other electronics, Bluetooth connected devices randomly change the frequency used thousands of time per second.
