The Bluetooth Special Interest Group said Friday that it will unveil version 3.0 of the Bluetooth wireless specification on April 21. The companies ready to roll out new Bluetooth 3.0 devices will be announced at that time, together with some of the technical details, the industry group said.
In a nutshell, the new high-speed Bluetooth spec will achieve faster link speeds by using the latest Wi-Fi (802.11n) technology. The goal is to enable very fast data transfers of large multimedia files while building on the very low-power idle modes of Bluetooth.
Users won't have to connect to a Wi-Fi network to implement high-speed file transfers via Bluetooth. "Transferring an entire music library, a complete DVD, a vacation's worth of photos, all within seconds at the touch of a button and wirelessly will now be possible," the group said.
Two for One
The Bluetooth SIG has developed an innovative method of radio substitution that will allow current Bluetooth protocols, profiles, security and pairings to be used in consumer devices while simultaneously achieving substantially faster speeds through the use of a secondary radio already present in the device.
"On the technical side, I can tell you that it is a Generic Alternate MAC/PHY (AMP) that will enable Bluetooth profiles to take advantage of 802.11 speeds," a Bluetooth SIG spokesperson said. "The 802.11 Protocol Adaption Layer (PAL) will enable the Generic AMP feature to be used with an 802.11 radio."
The association's two-pronged design neatly addresses the issue of backward compatibility by taking a classic Bluetooth connection "and allowing it to jump on top of the already present 802.11 radio, when necessary, to send bulky entertainment data faster," Bluetooth SIG Executive Director Michael Foley said last year. "When the speed of 802.11 is overkill, the connection returns to normal operation on a Bluetooth radio for optimal power management  and performance."
Though speed is perhaps the coolest part of 3.0, there's also good news for wireless headset and handset users. Bluetooth 3.0 will feature Enhanced Power Control, which reduces the incidence of disconnects caused by movement such as placing a phone in a pocket or purse, the group said.
The Ultimate Goal
Bluetooth 3.0 inevitably will be compared to the forthcoming USB 3.0 spec for use in next-generation PCs and digital media devices, beginning next year. USB 3.0 is being designed to achieve a 10 times boost in bandwidth throughput in comparison with present-day USB 2.0, while simultaneously improving the energy efficiency of the data transfers.
In other words, if it takes 10 minutes today to load up an Apple iPod with a wide selection of multimedia tracks, it would only take 60 seconds over a USB 3.0 connection, according to Intel.
The ultimate goal of the Bluetooth SIG is to produce a Bluetooth standard featuring speeds of up to 480 Mbps, which would allow it to be favorably compared to the USB 3.0 spec. In 2006, the Bluetooth SIG tapped the WiMedia Alliance brand of ultra-wideband (UWB) technology to serve as a high-speed channel for Bluetooth. However, the Bluetooth SIG intends to make immediate use of currently available 802.11 technology even as development work on UWB continues.
"We're committed to speedy wireless personal area network connections, and we'll always be looking for the best near-term and long-term way to accomplish that," Foley said. "The greatness of a generic alternate radio architecture being developed is that it's adaptable."
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