History of technology creation

Any wireless technology, including Bluetooth, is based on electrical energy. Although people began to encounter electricity even before our era, Bluetooth is only about 30 years old, the technology was invented relatively recently, in 1994. For comparison, there are ancient Egyptian texts about electric fish dating back to about 2750 BC. e. Two thousand years later, people were already studying static electricity: amber sticks, cat fur, light feathers.

In 1600, William Gilbert coined the term electricity. In 1729, Stephen Gray tried to transmit electricity over distances using different materials. Then gradually appeared wires, galvanic cells, incandescent lamps, electric generators, electric motors, telephone (1876), radio (1895), Internet (1969), mobile cellular communication (1983), wireless networks Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (1998).

Radio as the basis of wireless technologies

The term radio was popularized by Guglielmo Marconi, Alexander Popov, Heinrich Hertz, Nikola Tesla, William Crookes, Oliver Lodge and many others in the late 19th century. Since that time, electricity has become an essential component of modern civilization. Electric energy is increasingly being used to transmit information: wired telegraph and telephone, wireless radio, television, mobile communications, as well as wired, optical and wireless Internet. Bluetooth, as one of the most common directions for the development of information transmission technologies on Earth and in space, involves the use of radio waves.

Bluetooth and other wireless communication technologies are based on the basic principles of radio known since the late 19th century. At the beginning, a high-frequency carrier signal is formed, on which a second signal containing information is superimposed by modulation. This modulated signal is emitted by a radio transmitter in the form of radio waves. Getting to the antenna of the radio receiver, radio waves create a modulated signal. The radio receiver filters the signal with the required carrier frequency and restores the information signal from it. Under the influence of interference, the received signal differs from the transmitted one. There are many anti-interference technologies.

In the last century, wireless communication standards have made a number of technological revolutions. Among many others, Bluetooth takes its rightful place. To be able to interact with each other, smart devices from different manufacturers must use compatible technology standards. It is for this reason that almost all smart devices around the world are equipped with Bluetooth of different versions. At the same time, all versions are backward compatible, respectively, at some basic level, any device will work without fail.

How Bluetooth was created

In 1994, Ericsson (since October 2001 Sony Mobile Communications Inc.) began developing a wireless alternative to the wired RS-232 standard. The FLYWAY system was in dire need of such technology. The prospects for a new standard using radio waves were of interest to many manufacturers of telecommunications equipment. The development of cost-effective short-range wireless communications for daily use in everyday life at that time was carried out by all major companies in the industry. Many have already produced devices with various kinds of radio interfaces on an industrial scale. As a rule, radio communication was carried out in the ISM band within 2.4-2.5 GHz.

In 1998, at the initiative of Ericsson, the Special Interest Group (SIG) was founded, which at that time included four more giants of the telecommunications industry: Intel, IBM, Toshiba, Nokia. Also in 1998, a unique Bluetooth brand and logo was developed for a new energy-efficient and cheap wireless data and sound transmission technology. The word Bluetooth is made up of two parts: blue - blue and tooth - tooth. One bluish tooth was the king of Denmark Harald Blatand (Harald Blatand), who united the scattered warring lands in the 900s. In honor of him, the Bluetooth logo contains the initials of the runes Hagall (Hagalaz) and Berkana (Berkana). Read more about what does the name Bluetooth mean - read separately.

Bluetooth technology has greatly simplified and improved the transfer of data between compatible devices compared to infrared or wired interfaces such as RS-232 telecommunication cable. In 1999, Ericsson R520m and T36m phones were introduced with the first version of the wireless module. Today, people already habitually speak into space: Alice, turn on Bluetooth, please turn off Bluetooth, Alice. And in the early 2000s, strange people began to appear on the streets more and more often, talking loudly to themselves. Wireless headsets have gradually become fashionable. Bluetooth made it easy to connect a Microsoft mouse to an Apple laptop (their interfaces were previously incompatible). Bluetooth was used not only in mobile phones, but also for remote control of electronics, these are ordinary remote controls for a TV, tape recorder, CD player, Hi-Fi and other equipment.

In the summer of 2002, the Bluetooth SIG and the IEEE came to an agreement, and the Bluetooth specification, along with WiFi, became part of the IEEE 802.15.1 standard. The specification referred to devices operating in the radio frequency range from 2402 to 2480 MHz with a maximum power of up to 100 mW and up to 100 dBm, with a range of up to 100 meters. The Bluetooth protocol provided pairing of "point-point" and "point-multipoint". Bluetooth versions 1.0 and 1.0B, developed in 1998, did not support connection anonymity at the protocol level and suffered from poor compatibility between devices from different manufacturers. Later, specifications were developed from 1.1 to Bluetooth 5.3 from 2021.

Comparison of Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11 wireless interfaces

If we compare Bluetooth with IEEE 802.11, the main difference lies in the possibility of practical connection of 128 devices for WiFi and 8 devices for Bluetooth (in theory, up to 71 devices per Scatternet). Bluetooth works both in synchronous and asynchronous mode, and Wi-Fi only asynchronously. At the same time, the implementation of Bluetooth is 5 to 10 times cheaper than the implementation of IEEE 802.11 and more economical in terms of power consumption. Accordingly, if WiFi is used to organize wireless networks on an office or enterprise scale, then Bluetooth is used to replace the connection of compact communication tools from wired to wireless interfaces. There are special Bluetooth Serial Port Adapters that allow you to connect Bluetooth devices with an outdated serial port. This allows you to configure, for example, older industrial machines that do not have Wi-Fi, PCMCIA or even USB bus, using modern software from a smartphone or computer.

On the page https://www.bluetooth.today/en/android, see more details about using Bluetooth on Android and iOS, as well as a selection of applications from the Apple App Store and Google Play for working with wireless technologies from your mobile. Today, Bluetooth as a standard for easy-to-use, low-cost, functional, reliable, energy-efficient, secure short-range wireless radio communications is used everywhere on Earth and in space. At https://www.bluetooth.today/en/downloads everyone can download Bluetooth 5 driver for Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10, 11 and XP (64-bit and 32-bit) for laptop and desktop.