Stacking up high-speed Bluetooth against Certified Wireless USB

By Dr. Mike Foley, Bluetooth SIG
March 25, 2007 -- wirelessnetdesignline.com

As ultra wideband (UWB) radio nears mass production, manufacturers and expert observers alike forecast a collision between the two major wireless protocols that will ride upon this new high-speed technology: high-speed Bluetooth wireless technology and Certified Wireless USB.

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" hype—and the pessimism that followed—by 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.

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