Comparing bluetooth technology and infrared Essay

Comparing bluetooth technology and infrared - Essay Example The following paper analyses the relative advantages of all three. Bluetooth is an always-on, short-range radio based technology that resides on a microchip. Controlled and moderated by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, this short range wireless communication technology started off as a utility to enable laptop users to make calls via a mobile phone. It was commissioned by the mobile phone company Ericsson but soon started spreading. The concept behind the technology is fairly simple. It uses a 2.4 GHz band to connect blue tooth devices that may be within ten meters of each other to share at up to 720 Kbps (How Bluetooth Works). This technology can operate with many users to create a piconet, further networks of which allow larger communication. Safety and privacy is assured through encoding each link, thus not allowing third parties to access the data being transferred without the relevant PIN code or authorization. As a radio broadcast communication system is being utilized here, line of sight communication is not a problem in the case of Blu etooth technology. This leads to many possible applications of this technology. First of all wireless communication between various devices such as personal computers in small network or between mobile phones or between a personal computer and its connecting devices such as mouse and keyboard can be employed. This leads to easy communication without the use of long wires that can easily occupy useful space and is unseemly to the eyes and in cramped computer rooms. Game consoles use this technology to allow communication between the processing machine and the controllers. Dial-up internet facility on Personal Digital Assistants makes use of Bluetooth as well. Seeing the range of applications of this technology, one can surmise that it has some obvious benefits. First of all, it replaces serial equipment making use of wires spreading everywhere and allows easy communication with devices near it. There is the further advantage of mobility, where the user is not required to be tethered to the electronic device to be able to use a Bluetooth active device. Such practical advantages make its use worthwhile and convenient. Unlike the Infra Red technology discussed later, it does not require the connecting devices to be in line of sight which gives it an advantage in terms of range over Infra red enable devices. However, there are many disadvantages as well. As many applications as it has, Microsoft chose to not include Bluetooth support in its new operating system as it claimed there were still not many Bluetooth enables devices that required Windows support (How Bluetooth Works). This limits its uses for personal computer users who make use of the Windows operating system. Furthermore, the microchip that is required for Bluetooth technology can be labeled relatively expensive. This presents a challenge to its use in mobile phones which are hugely competitive in terms of prices and companies may see costs rising. This diminishes its extended use by the mobile phone industry unless its cost drops. There is also the problem of security. A number of weaknesses have been pointed out in Bluetooth's pin number based production of a device's initiation key. This can lead to possible cracks in security, allowing a third