RF Wireless Technology

Bluetooth is best known as the primary technology for wirelessly connecting mobile phones, tablets and computers with peripheral devices such as wireless headsets and speakers for streaming music. The technology has developed to include hands-free connectivity in cars, home automation, wearables and is a leading wireless protocol in the Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine to Machine (M2M) applications.

However, Bluetooth radios can be an ideal choice for a broad range of other designs. Bluetooth may be a good fit if your product:

• Would benefit from quick and easy wireless connectivity
• Calls for data rates many times greater than ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4)
• Requires greater portability and lower power consumption than Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11)

What’s new?

When the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) released its Bluetooth 5 standard last December 2016, mesh networking capability wasn’t in it, which was conspicuous by its absence as it’s a crucial ingredient for lucrative applications like home automation, industrial IoT, and beaconing. All the other pieces were there: 4x range, 2x speed and 8x broadcasting message capacity over the previous Bluetooth 4.2 version, plus improved interoperability and coexistence with other wireless technologies. Since Bluetooth 5 initial release the mesh working group released the 0.9 version of the Bluetooth mesh specification that is available to all SIG members to start prototyping.

So why is mesh networking such a big deal? Mesh changes Bluetooth from your typical point-to-point network–terminal to access point–to a real mesh networking topology, comparable to that of it's competitor Zigbee.

Mesh networking enables an unlimited number of Bluetooth-enabled devices to communicate, so the total range of a network is effectively unlimited. Combined with Bluetooth 5's increased speed, inherent frugal power consumption, low implementation cost, and massive market penetration, Bluetooth 5 is now poised to become a major contender in home automation, IIoT, and beaconing.

Bluetooth 5 is the latest version of this technology and next to WLAN (Wi-Fi, 802.11) it is the second most used wireless standard in the consumer sector with and estimated 13.9 billion Bluetooth enabled devices by 2020. Bluetooth is helping to fuel and further drive the exponential growth of IoT and the ever-increasing plethora of "smart" devices and applications.

• The Bluetooth 5.0 specification supports all Bluetooth 4.2 features without the need for modification.
• Bluetooth 5 applications running on the Bluetooth 4.2 stack will still work; however, only the 4.2 features will be available.

Sub 1GHz

1GHz - 5GHz

ZigBee PRO is currently the latest and most feature rich ZigBee stack available. In addition to a higher maximum number of devices (up to 65,560 in a single network), ZigBee PRO supports three times as many hops as standard ZigBee 2007 and features advanced routing techniques, multicast functionality, and better network security.

Sub 1GHz

1GHz - 5GHz

802.11a – This standard, which is alphabetically first but developed slight later than 802.11b, operates in the less "crowded" 5GHz frequency band. It includes support for a more advanced modulation scheme called orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) resulting in faster data transfer rates than 802.11b – up to 54 Mbit/s.

802.11g – For now, this is still the most common Wi-Fi technology in use today. Operating in the 2.4GHz band with OFDM support, 802.11g offers the higher data rates of 802.11a but without the greater costs associated with 5GHz chips. 802.11g is also backwards compatible with 802.11b.

802.11n ­ Featuring greatly extended range and improved data rates of up to 600Mbit/s, this standard is quickly overtaking 802.11g. These improvements are thanks in large part to wider channel bandwidth and the addition of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology. Because 802.11n can operate in both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, it can provide backward compatibility with previous standard at the cost of network speed.

802.11ac – This is the newest 802.11 standard, which is currently in the final stages of approval by the 802.11 Working Group. 802.11ac will offer channel bandwidth four times wider than previous standards, multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO), highly sophisticated error correction, and data throughput rates in the Gbit/s range.

Sub 1GHz

1GHz - 5GHz