The Odd Couple: Bluetooth and Ultra-Wideband

The Odd Couple: Bluetooth and Ultra-Wideband
But what is to be made of the newly formed alliance between Bluetooth wireless technology
and UWB? Perhaps it’s a case of “keep your friends close, but keep your enemies
closer?” It is clearly evident that UWB offers higher data rates and establishes a
more reliable data connection due to its multipath and wide bandwidth techniques
(we discuss UWB in Chapter 15, Ultra-Wideband: Introducing a New Short-Range
Wireless Medium). In many presentations of the UWB technology many have argued
that Bluetooth and UWB are competitors. Similarly, on these occasions we may have
become privy to numerous use cases illustrating how it would be possible for UWB to
succeed where Bluetooth fails; some reports even dare to suggest that Bluetooth is
dead. It really is too dark out there to see who is holding the hammer in a final attempt
to drive in that last nail!
Nevertheless, it seems that, with a degree of predictability, following various
announcements made by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) and press agencies,
industry commentators have unconditionally welcomed the extensible possibilities that UWB offers Bluetooth. With such amusement and chess-like frivolity you may
witness key players that make-up the various standards bodies maneuvering themselves
to other significant areas within a new organization like pawns in a political
game; whilst they individually strive for organizational dominance and forsake a technology
that they may have initially supported for a number of years. It seems as
though it’s a case of abandon ship and seek sanction and forgiveness in a new, albeit
immature standards body that has yet to leave its mooring. Alas, it seems as though
mortgages have to be paid and the bigger picture is forgotten. It is painfully clear that
without such support from the wider industry Bluetooth would have surely suffered
disbandment along with HomeRF. It is envisaged that UWB will be architected
within the Bluetooth specification, in turn, enabling the much sought after higher
data rates and the ability to penetrate popular audio/video types of applications.
Furthermore, it has to be said that secretly Bluetooth has also been viewed by many
in the industry as a technology struggling to penetrate key products within the consumer
electronics market – although it has succeeded within the cellular market in
many countries already. What is more evident is the poor uptake of Bluetooth in
mainstream consumer electronics within the US and to a greater extent in the UK and
Europe. This is largely rumored to be poor interoperation and coexistence related
issues, due to a large number of proprietary-based wireless technologies already utilizing
the 2.4GHz spectrum. With an incredible foresight, the Bluetooth SIG have
refused to become stagnant in a market that demands change and expects improved
functionality. In a continuous barrage of criticism, the SIG have been pushed into
introducing modifications that have afforded it efficient discovery and pairing procedures,
as well as modifying the most critical aspect: coexistence. In introducing an
Adaptive Frequency Hopping (AFH) scheme Bluetooth provides a more harmonious
coexistence with the large consumer base of proprietary and standardized wireless
technologies.