In the next section I’ll discuss what are called mesh network technologies which allow many devices to all be interconnected. Only two devices can normally participate in a peer-to-peer connection. Peer-to peer simply means when two devices are connected together for direct communication. That being said, I recommend that you read this entire article regardless of your product’s specific needs because you can gain a general understanding of all the wireless technologies available to you. Not only are there a huge number of wireless technologies currently available, but it’s also a moving target with new technologies regularly being introduced.īased on the intended functionality of your product, it should be relatively simple for you to immediately determine which group of technologies you need to consider.įor example, if you require two devices separated by 30 feet to transfer low amounts of data then it doesn’t make sense to use any of the long-distance or high-speed wireless technologies. Joe spent his early career as a hardware designer on a number of electronics platforms for NASA and military spacecraft at Lockheed Martin Space Systems.Deciding what type of wireless technology your new product should use can be an overwhelming task. Prior to Avnet, he was a technical marketing manager and FAE at Memec. Before joining Bluegiga in 2012, Joe managed the wireless portfolio strategy as technology director at Avnet Electronics Marketing. Previously he worked at Bluegiga as a director of business development for the Americas West region.
Joe Tillison joined Silicon Labs in February 2015 with the company’s acquisition of Bluegiga Technologies, a leading provider of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi modules and software. Senior Manager, Field Marketing, Silicon Labs See also: Bluetooth BLE Beacon Pseudo-Standards (Apple iBeacon, Google’s Eddystone, AltBeacon), Top Five Considerations for Designing a BLE Beacon Quickly, Securely, and Effectively And we provide information on end-to-end solutions to get you started.
We provide references to field-hardened example code and tools to develop and deploy it. We cover the leading beacon pseudo-standards at a high level, and in detail in the Appendix. We provide a short history of Bluetooth and its derivatives, including Bluetooth low energy and beacons. We examine beacon applications to help you brainstorm some of your own. The goal is to help you get to market quickly with the right, stable solution. Our experts have put some very relevant information in a whitepaper on developing with Bluetooth beacons, which can be downloaded here. Whitepaper on Developing with Bluetooth BLE Beacons When a service needs to be advertised, the GATT includes the relevant information, and Bluetooth scanners register the node’s capabilities and take relevant actions. GATT provides a structured list that defines the services, characteristics and attributes of a given node.Ī beacon node might include multiple services. The SIG also abandoned its existing “Bluetooth profiles” system and adopted GATT (Generic Attribute) profiles for BLE. Bluetooth Low Energy uses 40 2MHz-wide channels instead of Classic Bluetooth’s 79 1MHz-wide channels.īluetooth BR/EDR, Bluetooth Smart Ready, and Bluetooth Smart (BLE) (see comment above about branding) Bluetooth Generic Attribute (GATT) Profile They also both use frequency hopping to spread their RF energy. BLE was a radical departure from what is known as Bluetooth Basic Rate / Enhanced Data Rate (Bluetooth BR/EDR), or Classic Bluetooth, introduced in the late 1990s and used in handsets, speakers, earphones, car kits, etc.īluetooth Low Energy and Classic Bluetooth both utilize the 2.4 GHz ISM band. The SIG’s goal with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) was to enter the emerging low-energy IoT market, creating a standard that would allow devices to run for years on very low power. (See for more details.) As a result of all this branding, the terms Bluetooth Smart, Bluetooth Low Energy, BLE, and now Bluetooth low energy technology are used interchangeably. It was later re-branded as Bluetooth Smart, and has just been rebranded again in 2016. In 2009, the SIG announced its version 4.0, including Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE).