What is Bluetooth?
Basically, Bluetooth is the main wireless technology used on virtually all devices. Bluetooth is just an invisible wire that connects different devices together. Stick with me, we’re going to get more complex as we keep going. When we talk about Bluetooth, we really mean connectivity between devices, but it involves both signal and hardware. On the hardware side, both devices should be equipped with an antenna-provided chip that can encode, decode and transmit data through an antenna.
We’ve probably all tried and hopefully succeeded in connecting a device via Bluetooth. What’s really happening is that the device that’s set to be discoverable, usually the one with the final output (like a speaker), sends out ping signals that can be detected by other Bluetooth-enabled devices. , that is, it appears on your phone screen. Once you click connect and link the devices together, you have just formed a piconet. No, it’s not a net used to catch yellow Pokémon – Net Pikachu, ha – yeah, I’m not funny… It’s actually a micro-array of recognizable radio waves communicating between devices. These waves are short (~15 meters) so that there are no conflicting Bluetooth waves anywhere.
The Bluetooth signal
The signal itself operates in the frequency of 2.4 to 2.485GHz, which belongs to the Unlicensed Scientific, Industrial and Medical (ISM) category. To continue down the path of technical understanding, according to the Bluetooth website, it uses “a spread-spectrum, frequency-hopping, full-duplex signal at a nominal rate of 1600 hops/sec.” To break this down into words that anyone can understand, the signal isn’t just on one frequency, in fact, it hops on different frequencies – A LOT. 1600 times per second, to be exact. This keeps the Bluetooth signal connected between devices and prevents static from occurring due to competing signals. It also helps it be ultra-secure, more so than your neighbor’s wireless network that you stole.
