Bluetooth Over Wi-Fi Launches on April 21

By Mark Hachman

The Bluetooth SIG will officially announce Bluetooth 3.0 on April 21, a spokeswoman for the Special Interest Group said on Thursday. The new technology will be able to use 802.11 or Wi-Fi radios to transfer information.

Specifically, the SIG will announce a "Generic Alternate MAC/PHY (AMP) that will enable Bluetooth profiles to take advantage of 802.11 speeds," she said.

Details on the Bluetooth 3.0 spec were actually discussed in detail a year ago, when SIG chairman Michael Foley disclosed that the Bluetooth spec would be able to ride both the Wi-Fi specification as well as the ultrawideband protocol, which has since shut down its standards groupand seen UWB firms like TZero go under.

Bluetooth 3.0 will include a new feature, however, known as "Enhanced Power Control," which will reduce the incidence of disconnects caused by movement such as placing a phone in a pocket or purse, the spokeswoman said.

The Bluetooth 3.0 specification was originally slated to be released last year, with products scheduled to be released early in 2009. The spokeswoman said that chip companies were "already lined up to roll this out," an indication that products might not be far behind.

The idea behind Bluetooth 3.0 is that while Bluetooth can transfer media files, it's not nearly fast enough even at the 3.0-Mbits/s data rates of the Enhanced Data Rate protocol. Wi-Fi is much faster, especially with the 200 Mbits/s or so bandwidth that 802.11n promises.

Bluetooth 3.0 will allow both generic Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-encoded Wi-Fi data packets to coexist in the same network, simultaneously, through time-slicing. Under the Bluetooth 3.0 scheme, a Bluetooth radio will contact another using the Bluetooth protocol. Once a connection has been established, the Wi-Fi radios will be enabled for data transfer; the Bluetooth radios will then unclasp the handshake between the two devices.