Bluetooth 3.0 will be unveiled on April 21, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group says. The new specification achieves faster speeds with Wi-Fi (802.11n) technology while development of ultra-wideband development continues. Bluetooth 3.0 will be compared to the upcoming USB 3.0 spec, which is expected to be 10 times faster than USB 2.0.

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 Relevant Products/Services transfers of large multimedia files while building on the very low-power Relevant Products/Services 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 Relevant Products/Services 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 ……….Read More