Stacking Up High-speed Bluetooth Against Certified Wireless USB

By Mike Foley

April 2, 2007

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The emergence of Certified Wireless USB and high-speed Bluetooth technology, both using the same WiMedia UWB radio, has led many to assume that one technology will dominate across all types of devices and usage scenarios, much as earlier wireless technologies, such as Wi-Fi and even today's Bluetooth wireless technology, had once been hyped as the single solution for all wireless needs.

Bluetooth technology defied the original "one-size-fits-all" hypeýand the pessimism that followedýby gaining traction in the market for which it was originally designed. Namely, mobile phones and the devices that connect to mobile phones.

Wi-Fi, too, established its own dominance in the market for which it was optimized: wireless local area networking between PCs and access points. While the marketplace did not satisfy observers' lust for decisive victory between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies, it did sort out which technology is superior for each application.

Similarly, high-speed Bluetooth technology and Certified Wireless USB work best in different applications, and the marketplace will once again decide where each technology will land based on these technologies' core strengths.

Figure 1: Combined Bluetooth Certified Wireless USB protocol stack.

Bluetooth: Optimized for the Mobile Environment

Bluetooth technology has firmly established itself as the short-range wireless technology of choice for mobile devices and personal area networks. Its dominance in the mobile market is set to continue.

Led by strong penetration into mobile phones, over 600 million Bluetooth enabled devices were shipped in 2006, creating an installed base of more than a billion Bluetooth units. Growth in shipments is widely predicted to continue for years to come, and by the end of the decade, manufacturers will likely be shipping more than two billion Bluetooth enabled devices every year.

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