Has anyone ever felt like agent 007 when they're on a phone call with someone using your wireless earbuds or is it just me? Someone is trying to talk to you but you’re just like oh sorry I have my 140 dollars AirPods on, I can’t hear you. But one thing I wondered was how they actually work. It’s usually one of those things we just ignore and move on with our lives but I still have a child’s curiosity so here we are. Today we are talking about how Bluetooth and how the company works. We all know the basics of Bluetooth, it connects two devices together but how exactly does it work and why is it not like wifi. Bluetooth uses radio waves but has a smaller radius. It has a frequency of 2.45gHZ while wifi uses 5Ghz. Also, the reason it can connect to a lot of devices at the same time is because of a thing called frequency hopping. Bluetooth uses 79 bands of radio waves in the aforementioned 2.45GHz frequency. When you send data, Bluetooth first divides this data into smaller packets. These packets are sent individually over those 79 bands, and Bluetooth is smart enough to change bands rapidly so that no one line gets clogged. This process of breaking down data into smaller packets and sending them individually is also why Bluetooth is used mainly for small data transfers that don't need to happen quickly. If you need to transfer large amounts of data quickly, there are better wireless protocols than Bluetooth. This is why transferring large files on Bluetooth is super slow but it is easier on the battery. So it is a real balancing act. Wifi transfers huge lumps of data faster but it wastes more battery than Bluetooth which uses less battery life but huge amounts of data are processed slower. The reason Bluetooth doesn’t use an internet connection is that instead of using LAN or WLAN it uses a personal area network (PAN). Early in 1995, Sven Mattisson joined the Ericsson division in Lund. An expert on radio implementations, he started to work on the hardware development of the radio. The intent was to make a low-power radio in complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology without any external components. With the hardware team, I worked on system solutions to create a full CMOS implementation. In Lund, the project was called MC Link. MC came from a multi-communicator Ericsson was developing: a small personal assistant that could be connected to the cellular phone via a wireless link. In 1997, after nearly four years as a research project, Ericsson hired Örjan Johansson to create a business around the short-range radio concept. An ecosystem was needed, involving other industries. Intel was the first interested party. Together with key people from Intel, including Jim Kardach and Simon Ellis, other companies were approached: Nokia, Toshiba, and IBM. The codename Bluetooth was used for this international project. It was named after the 10th-century king of Denmark and Norway, Harald Bluetooth. The king famously united Danish tribes into one kingdom, much like the Bluetooth technology unites devices. Together, the five companies created the Bluetooth Special Interest Group in 1998. The rest is history. The technology was publicly announced in May 1999 and the first specifications were released in July 1999. In 2000, Ericsson launched its first Bluetooth product: a wireless voice headset. Interestingly, it came with an adaptor for the phone since the phones did not yet have Bluetooth embedded. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group is the standards organization that oversees the development of Bluetooth standards and the licensing of Bluetooth technologies and trademarks to manufacturers. The SIG is a not-for-profit, non-stock corporation. Although if Bluetooth was making money it would be worth 5.34 billion dollars by 2023.
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