Bluetooth (Wireless) Technology Bluetooth from Expert Monitoring Over the last few years, radio-frequency technologies have been developing as a relevant and increasingly indispensable communication support. Together with the innumerable applications in our everyday life, the usage of wireless communications in industrial environment seems to start being of great interest to the scientific community. “The possibilities of the wireless technologies to add value in monitoring, control and industrial-system configuration are tremendous” Key benefits are the elimination of cables and connectors from the manufacturing floors, resulting in shorter installation times and reduced machine maintenance, and the potential for a flexible topology and mobile applications. Furthermore, the wireless technologies will facilitate communications with rotating and moving machine parts and enable systems to be programmed, actuated and automatically report their status back to a central controller or to an operator with a laptop or another wireless device. I. BLUETOOTH TECHNOLOGY Bluetooth is a standard for short-range radio communications, originally developed as a cable replacement to connect portable devices. It uses the Industrial Scientific Medicine radio band (ISM) 2.45 GHz and Frequency Hopped Spread Spectrum (FHSS) as medium access. The required and nominal range is 10m (transmit power 0dBm) and an external power amplifier can be added to extend the range up to 100m. The raw bit rate is 1 Mbps, with a Gaussian Frequency Shift Keying (GFSK) modulation technique Bluetooth supports point to point and point to multi-point connections, which can be established automatically and dynamically between Bluetooth units, e.g. once a laptop enters the range of some wireless devices. II. INDUSTRIAL REQUIREMENTS Mission-critical applications in industrial environment represent an interesting prospect for the use of Bluetooth. As a low cost, low power, short-range radio technology, it would be particularly suitable for this kind of applications, where the radio link reliability is very important in order to reach high demands on deterministic behavior and real-time performance . Industrial equipment is often installed in harsh environments, with extreme temperature, vibration and other radiating sources. The ISM band is a globally available, license-free band, reserved for general use by Industrial, Scientific and Medicine applications . This involves the presence of other users or polluters of the shared spectrum. The Bluetooth standard has been built in order to guarantee reliability and robustness in presence of interference. The Frequency Hopping Code Division Multiple Access (FH-CDMA) and the Error Correction techniques involved in the system specifications can assure a good degree of interoperability with other radio networks or generally radiating sources. For more information on this topic, visit www.expertmon.com Information kindly provided by... Ken Gale - Product Development Director Expert Monitoring Ltd Cardiff Business Technology Centre Tel: +44(0) 2920 647021 Fax: +44(0) 2920 647009 Email: k.gale@expertmon.com

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