Competing Technologies

Bluetooth                  

                Bluetooth is a standard developed by a group of electronics manufacturers that allows any sort of electronic equipment -- from computers and cell phones to keyboards and headphones -- to make its own connections, without wires, cables or any direct action from a user. Bluetooth is intended to be a standard that works at two levels:

• It provides agreement at the physical level -- Bluetooth is a radio-frequency standard.

• It also provides agreement at the next level up, where products have to agree on when bits are sent, how many will be sent at a time and how the parties in a conversation can be sure that the message received is the same as the message sent.

               There are already a couple of ways to get around using wires. One is to carry information between components via beams of light in the infrared spectrum. Infrared refers to light waves of a lower frequency than human eyes can receive and interpret. Infrared is used in most television remote control systems, and with a standard called IrDA (Infrared Data Association) it's used to connect some computers with peripheral devices. For most of these computer and entertainment purposes, infrared is used in a digital mode -- the signal is pulsed on and off very quickly to send data from one point to another

802.16 / WIMAX

               WiMAX wireless Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs), based on the IEEE 802.16 family of standards, will soon offer wireless broadband Internet access to residences and businesses at relatively low cost. The standard supports shared transfer rates up to 75Mbps from a base station, which can offer broadband access without requiring a physical 'last-mile' connection from the end customer to a service provider. Service delivery to end clients is likely to be roughly 300Kbps for residences and 2Mbps for businesses.

              The 802.16 standard defines a medium access control (MAC) networking layer that supports a number of physical layer specifications. The multiple physical layer specifications are a reflection of the huge bandwidth covered by the standard: 10 to 66 GHz. The initial 802.16 standard was followed by several working groups, some of whom have released their amendments to the standard. Most prominent among the amendments is 802.16a, which extends the standard into the spectrum between 2 and 11 GHz.

802.15 / WPAN

              Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) forms the core of a new set of Wireless networks which consists of WPAN, WLAN and WMAN. This network talks with each other and makes connectivity possible.

               BlueTooth protocol defines the possibility of Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN). The possibility of WPAN using Bluetooth protocol is endless. Connecting the appliances in the Home is one of the existing possibilities. Integrated labs are currently working in this area.

802.15.3a

              Will operate in unspecified portions of the 3.1-to-10.6 frequency bands. Data throughput speed of 110 Mbits/s at a range of 10 meters and 480 Mbits/s over 1 meter is likely. High-definition-quality video can run at about 35 Mbits/s.

802.15.4

              Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum networks that can support 65 534 devices per network; 30-meter range; peak data rate is about 250 kilobits per second (kbits/s); operates 27 channels in three unlicensed frequency bands: 2.4 GHz, 902 to 928 megahertz (MHz), and 868 to 870 MHz.

3G and 4G Cellular

Source: electronics.howstuffworks.com; www.intel.com; wave-report.com; www.privateline.com