Data Communications Bluetooth - Essay Example

?Data Communications – Bluetooth Table of Contents Table of Contents Introduction 2 Communication Technology 2 History of Bluetooth 2 Bluetooth 3 Digitisation 3 Symmetric vs. Asymmetric & Speed 3 The Bluetooth 2.0 Standard 4 Channel Hopping 4 Security 4 4 Conclusion 5 The Future of Bluetooth 5 References 7 Introduction Communication Technology Development of effective and efficient communication mechanisms has always been a basic human endeavour. Even in this era, when a number of analogue and digital communication technologies are available and getting mature day by day, the research and development activities are pacing high in this field. Bluetooth is an important wireless digital communication technology that uses short range radio waves to connect to other Bluetooth enabled devices without any physical connection. The technology is widely used in mobiles, computer networks and other handheld devices like PDAs, digital cameras, scanners, printers, etc. History of Bluetooth Historically, “The word "Bluetooth" is taken from the 10th century Danish King Harald Bluetooth.” (BlueTomorrow, 2012). The exploratory work on Bluetooth technology was initiated by mobile phone company Ericsson in 1994. Later on, a group of companies including Intel, IBM, Toshiba, and Nokia formed a promotional group, formally known to be Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG). The group supports research and development of the technology and publicised the standards of the technology in May 1998. (Joseph et al. 2008) Bluetooth Digitisation Bluetooth technology is a result of advancements in Digital Communications witnessed in the last two decades of the twentieth Century. In simplest terms the representation of information in digits is called digitisation of information and this representation is commonly referred to be the digital data. However, the transmission of digital data from one device to another device remained a challenging demand till late in this era. Specially, the digital representation of continuous signal like a movie or song consumes more storage space when compared to information that was originally produced as digital data. Additionally, this data is very expensive in terms of transmission rates that a Bluetooth channel can support due to its speed limitations and triggers end user annoyance. Therefore, the low transmission rate has always been a serious issue in wireless technologies and especially in case of Bluetooth it has posed serious concerns for communication scientists. However, the advancements in the areas of signal quality and strength, compression algorithms and wireless technologies have resulted in faster communications and popularity of wireless communications generally and Bluetooth technology in particular. Symmetric vs. Asymmetric & Speed There are basically two types of digital communication in Bluetooth technology; asymmetric and symmetric. In asymmetric communication, only one device transmits at a given time, whilst in symmetric communication both Bluetooth devices are transmitting information simultaneously. The technology offers different bit rates for both types of transmission. In asymmetric communication the bit rate is slightly more than 2178.1 kb/s using the Bluetooth standard 2.0, which was introduced in 2004. Symmetric communication reduces this rate to approximately 1306.9 kb/s (Huang & Larry, 2007). However, these transmission rates are not available in practical scenarios where wireless communication is affected by the distance and obstruction between communicating devices, noise in the environment, protocols being used and many other factors. The Bluetooth 2.0 Standard Bluetooth technology has considerably advanced since the introduction of 2.0 standards in 2004. Now, it is a much more reliable and robust wireless technology. “Bluetooth uses a standard 2.4 GHz frequency so that all Bluetooth-enabled devices will be compatible with each other. The only drawback of Bluetooth is that, because of its high frequency, its range is limited to 30 feet.” (Techterms, 2012). This frequency is also used by many other technologies such as cordless home phones and WIFI, but Bluetooth technology divides the frequency into 79 channels and uses channel hopping to ensure reliability and speed in communications. Channel Hopping Hopping technology ensures that two communicating Bluetooth devices keep on changing their frequency channels during a communication session, simultaneously. This channel hopping may be as fast as 1600 times per second. The hopping technology has provided Bluetooth communications a clear edge over other communication technologies that work on much less channels while communicating. For an instance, 802.11 standards that are used by WIFI technology divide the 2.4 GHz frequency in only 14 channels as compared to 69 channels of Bluetooth. Security Security is a serious concern in Bluetooth communications as (Dwivedi, 2010) have stated, “a variety of issues from weakness in specifications to implementation flaws have put Bluetooth security in news.” Bluetooth has addressed these issues through authentication, authorization, encryption and pairing methodologies. In reaction to several security concerns raised lately, the Bluetooth SIG created the Secure Simple Pairing protocol. This protocol supports four association modes: passkey entry, numeric comparison, just works and out-of-band model (Khan, 2010). However, the security enforcement comes at a cost and for obvious reasons; a more secure communication channel will consume more bandwidth for Quality of Service (QoS) and encryption mechanisms. If QoS is not a consideration, the speed may increase considerably in Bluetooth communications. (Gehrmann, Joakim & Smeets, 2004). Still the security of Bluetooth should be perceived in the limited scenario of short wave communications. Conclusion Owing to its ease of use, security, availability and affordability Bluetooth technology has gained rapid fame among hardware manufacturers and the masses. The technology has now become almost a default feature in all hardware devices that supports digital communications, like laptops, PDAs, mobile phones, computer networks, etc. The major benefits offered by Bluetooth technology include: short range radio wave, inexpensiveness, availability, ease of use and configuration, high speed, multiple communication channels and security mechanisms. Sobh (2008) observes, “Bluetooth is a low cost and short range, and low power radio technology.” These benefits make the technology attractive for both personal and commercial uses, like direct and personal marketing and advertising in an area with high footfall or shopping plaza. The Future of Bluetooth Amor (2002) declares, “Future aspirations for Bluetooth are unstoppable because of the acceptance it has received from many big companies.” Moreover, the attention it is attracting from researchers shows the promise for wide range use of the technology in newer inventions, especially those that require affordable short range communications. Bluetooth offers easy bridging among multiple hardware technologies and can offer quality solutions for a high-tech, fast moving world. Sobh (2008) points out, “Bluetooth is the fastest growing technology. Its applications are increasing as the research goes on.” More recently, the version 3.0 has increased the theoretical data throughput to as fast as 26Mbp/s while version 4.0 has increased energy efficiency 5-10 times. (Bennett, 2012). The induction of Bluetooth 3.0 and 4.0 standards have changed the perception of the technology in terms of security, efficiency and reliability. References Amor, Daniel 2002, Internet Future Strategies: How Pervasive Computing Will Change the World, Prentice Hall Professional, USA. Bennett, Brian 2012, The power of Bluetooth 4.0: It'll change your life, viewed 23 April, 2012, http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57389687-94/the-power-of-bluetooth-4.0-itll-change-your-life/ BlueTomorrow 2012, Bluetooth History, viewed 14 April, 2012, http://www.bluetomorrow.com/about-bluetooth-technology/history-of-bluetooth/bluetooth-history.html Dwivedi, Himanshu 2010, Mobile Application Security, Tata McGraw-Hill Education, India. Gehrmann, Christian, Joakim, Persson & Ben Smeets 2004, Bluetooth Security, Artech House, USA. Huang, Albert S & Larry, Rudolph 2007, Bluetooth Essentials for Programmers, Cambridge University Press, UK. Joseph, T, T, Paul, J, Kline, C & Bala, K 2008, Bluetooth Application Programming with the Java APIs, Morgan Kaufmann, USA. Khan, Al-Sakib, Pathan 2010, Security of Self-Organizing Networks: MANET, WSN, WMN, VANET, Taylor & Francis, USA. Sobh, Tarek 2008, Advances in Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering, Springer, USA. Techterms 2012, Bluetooth, viewed 14 April, 2012, Read More