Bluetooth 5, More Than Simple Speed

Bluetooth is an innovation from mid 1990's. Months back Bluetooth released details on its latest product, Bluetooth 5. And with Samsung Galaxy S8, this thing did go under the radar, because it wasn't even official if it will have Bluetooth 5 or latest iteration of Bluetooth 4. Latest iterations of Bluetooth 4, were basically some improvements in it. Like syncing time, pairing time and detection time etc. Doesn't really change the way you use your smartphone.

Bluetooth 4 comes in 2 categories, Bluetooth Classic and Bluetooth Low energy.

Bluetooth classic is used in your mouse, speakers, keyboards, and even PS4 remote controler as well. While Bluetooth Low energy is used in health and fitness products and beacons. We will get to beacons, a little later.

Now The name Bluetooth 5 signifies, a big change within itself. With Bluetooth 5, the Bluetooth classic remains exactly the same. and is also completely backwards compatible. So keyboards, mouse and all these things will work and there wont be any problem.

However big change is with Bluetooth Low energy in Bluetooth 5.

First

> A greater Range

> Greater speed

< Lesser power

Lets start with Range first

> An Increased Range,

Traditionally outdoor range was 50 Meters and the indoor range was around 10 meters. Now with Bluetooth 5 it is boosted to 200 Meters outdoors and indoors range is around 40 meters. Now importance of this upgrade is related to Internet of things, House automation and even home security. Because now these devices will be communicating in wireless way and with low energy consumption.

> A Greater Speed

Range is not the only improvement. There is improvement in speed as well. Now in Bluetooth 4 specification, the physical speed was 25 Megabits/sec. Here its boosted to 50 Megabits/sec. Now physical speed basically means throughput. There are protocol layers on the transmitted information, which is why actual data sent is reduced.  All thanks to 8 times increased bandwidth.

< Optimized Power Usage

Now you might imagine, with increase in range and speed, the power usage should go up but with clever hardware technology, the power usage is optimized very well. This includes better use of frequency, different ways of making modulation which is using energy 2.5 times lesser than ever before.

So Bluetooth in 3 points is summed up, Greater range, Greater Speed, and lesser power consumption. But it doesn't end here, there is on extra thing added to Bluetooth 5. In Bluetooth 4, there was an idea of connection less broadcasting and communication. Specially used in mobile phones, for both call, gaming and even to connect two completely different hardware.

4. Broadcasting, Advertisement and Marketing

With Bluetooth 5 we can use it for connection less advertisement. This basically means, in shopping malls, you will find notifications transmitted by beacons shop that may include offers and contact information. Or at a tollbooth / parking booth, we can receive information on charges. There are many in fact endless possibilities.

There was problem with Bluetooth 4, you were allowed to put only 31 bytes of data inside the broadcasting packets, and there were very limited formats to embed the information. Most used ones at that time was apple iBeacon from apple, and Eddie Stone from Google. For example, https://SagarPatilSpace.wordpress.com with formatting as a URL would not fit into these limited bytes. So this capacity is increased from 31 bit to 255 Bit. Good enough, to send a large chunk of data.

5. Identification

There will be a UUID to every Bluetooth 5. This is called, Universally Unique Identifying Number and is a 128bit Number. Format : 00XXX0X0-X0X0-000X-XX00-000X0000X0XX.

Your phone will also have a unique beacon. But to recognize beacons, you will need internet. while to create beacon, you will need Raspberry Pi.

This will see boost in Bluetooth beacon usage. So with projections, Bluetooth 5 has been made available with Samsung Galaxy S8, and will be available in most of

smartphones by End of 2017. Now if you're buying a Smartphone or gadget at this time, get one with Bluetooth 5.

This Blog ends here, but are you wondering why we cant print money to become rich? Or may be you know that its not a good idea, do you know why? I'll let you know in the next one. Meanwhile you can Hit like if you liked, subscribe for more, and your constructive feedback is always appreciated.