2015/5/21 23:54:16
Source: Web
Views:1560
Comments:0
A major
sociopolitical figure from 10th century Scandinavia reverberates today in
the name of a communications company that has developed a single communications
standard for connecting our complex world of mobile computing devices. On May
12th, the National Inventors Hall of Fame will
induct Jaap C. Haartsen as the
inventor of Bluetooth wireless technology. Although not the only innovator to
have a hand in the development of the wireless communications standard,
Haartsen was responsible for some important Bluetooth advances and is the sole
inventor listed on the patent protecting basic Bluetooth communications.
Between
958 and 970 AD, the kingdom of Denmark was ruled by Harald Blåtand, also known as Harald Bluetooth. Some
of the major events of Harald’s reign include his conversion to Christianity in
960 and expansion of the Danish kingdom into lands which are part of
present-day Norway. Converting the Danes to a single religion and engineering a
series of public works for the Danish people helped Bluetooth unify many Danish tribes into a
single country which still exists with us today. If our
readers have ever wondered what the sharp, angular Bluetooth symbol stood for,
they might be interested to know that it is a combination of the Danish runes for
H and B.
Fast-forwarding
about one millennium to the mid-1990s brings us to the earliest days of the
modern Bluetooth that we know today. In 1993, Jaap Haartsen was working as a
wireless communications engineer for Swedish digital communications firm
Ericsson when he was tasked to develop a short-range radio connection that
would enable new functionalities for mobile phones. In 1995, Haartsen was
joined by Sven Mattisson, another engineer of
wireless communication technologies, and the pair were
able to develop multi-communicator, or MC, links.
Linking
two Bluetooth-enabled devices creates an ad-hoc, short-range wireless network
known as a “piconet.” These piconets, which operate in an unlicensed
industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) band ranging from 2.4 gigahertz (GHz) to 2.485 GHz, are
dynamically created whenever Bluetooth devices are within ten meters of each
other. Eight devices can connect to the same piconet at once and multiple
piconets can operate on the same device at the same time. When connected to the
piconet, one device that has been designated as a master can transmit data to
one or more slave devices. Each piconet can handle digital communications
involving voice, data, printing, faxes and more, and the ability to operate
multiple piconets at the same time enables Bluetooth to provide an incredible
amount of short-range telecommunications functionality.
Haartsen’s
work would focus on piconet networks over the coming years and he would leave
Ericsson to play a role in the founding of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group
(SIG) in 1998. Between 1998 and 2000, Haartsen served as the chairman of the
SIG air protocol certifications group, helping to standardize the Bluetooth
radio communications protocol.
The
standardized nature of Bluetooth which allows all of these dynamic wireless
networks among a diversity of electronic devices is why the 10th century Danish
king came to serve as the namesake for a Swedish technology. The Bluetooth
development team was searching for a new name to replace MC Link and the current moniker we all know was
proposed in the late 1990s by Intel’s head of technological
development, Jim Kardach. Kardach was in Toronto, Canada, presenting wireless
technologies to SIG companies along with Mattisson and the two traded stories during
a wintry pub crawl, during which Mattisson brought up the figure of Harald
Bluetooth. Soon thereafter, Kardach received a history book entitled The
Vikings and a representation of Bluetooth was one of the first things that
Kardach came across. When he and others made the connection that, much like
Harald Bluetooth,the wireless technology sought to
unify a lot of separate entities into a single system, the
name seemed like the best fit at the time.
There
are about 10 patents protecting Bluetooth technology according to the Centre
for Business History in Stockholm, most of which are held by Ericsson. The
patent which brings Haartsen his hall of fame acclaim is U.S. Patent No. 6590928,
titled Frequency Hopping Piconets in an Uncoordinated Wireless Multi-User
System. The patent discloses a wireless network with a master unit and a slave
unit, the master unit being capable of communicating with the slave unit by
means of a virtual frequency hopping channel. The invention solved a need for a
cost-effective wireless local network supporting both voice and data transmissions
by enabling self-organization techniques to make efficient use of limited
available radio spectrum. The patent application was filed in September 1997
and was issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in July 2003; it lists
Haartsen as inventor and Ericsson as assignee.
Bluetooth
SIG formed in 1998 as a coalition of five promoter companies:
Ericsson, Intel, Nokia, Toshiba and IBM. By the end of that year, there were already 400 members. The
first Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone, the Ericsson T36, was
brought to market in 2000. The following year saw the first Bluetooth-enabled
printers, laptops and hands-free car kits. Bluetooth hit the wearable gadgetrywave early
with Bluetooth chips implanted within watches and sunglasses in 2006. By
2012, annual shipments of Bluetooth-enabled
products reached 2 billion worldwide. At the end of
2014, membership in Bluetooth SIGS had reached 24,000 members and hit 90
percent penetration into the mobile phone market.
Anyone
who has followed our coverage of technological trends here on IPWatchdog will
probably realize that the ubiquity of the Bluetooth data transmission system
puts it squarely into the rapidly expanding Internet of Things sector. As we’ve
reported in the past, there are predictions that by 2050 there will be a total of 50 billion devices
with wireless data transmission technologies, and such
wide-ranging candidates such as tennis rackets and toothbrushes have been
suggested. The past two Consumer Electronic Shows in
Las Vegas have been dominated by discussions of the Internet of Things. In
recent years, Bluetooth has developed theBluetooth Smart system which
improves battery power efficiency, enabling longer usage in devices with small
batteries. Everyday objects like shoes, speakers or toothbrushes can be
implanted with a Bluetooth Smart chip to connect directly with apps on a
smartphone or tablet, making it a pretty valuable communications protocol for
IoT technologies.
Bluetooth
chips are already installed within a diverse array of things which are
available in the consumer tech market. Short-range connectivity has already
been used to introduce a collection of wireless computer
peripherals like mice or keyboards. The recently
released OM/ONE speaker, an omnidirectional
speaker/microphone that levitates atop a magnetic base, shows
how innovators are continuing to improve upon Bluetooth-enabled products that
have already been available for years. A team of engineers at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology have developed a Bluetooth-enabled fingernail trackpad called NailO which
allows a user to interact with a mobile phone or computer unobtrusively.
(Credit: Web)