What are Bluetooth Piconets

Ethernet connection within a home or office requires the use of connecting cables, which are both expensive and more often than not a nuisance. Bluetooth offers the perfect solution to cable connections. Bluetooth eliminates the use of any cables and can be used on many devices including headsets to a cellular phone.

The lack of cables in a Bluetooth network connection means that the connection is not known as a LAN – Local Area Network but rather as a PAN – Personal Area Network. Bluetooth devices connect by establishing piconets. For a piconet to be established, there has to be at least two devices and a maximum of eight. The network is set up automatically when the Bluetooth enabled devices are within range of each other hence no manual input is required. The device communicates by a slave – master “round robin scheme” at speeds of 1 Mbps for a standard Bluetooth. However, speeds in excess of 3 Mbps can be attained by the 2.0 version of the Bluetooth. The speeds in a piconet are determined by the speed of the slowest device.

The big question is if Bluetooth devices are likely to clash with Wi-Fi devices within the same Personal Area Network. It is interesting considering that both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi run on the same frequency ranges of 2.4 GHz ISM (Industrial, Scientific and Medical) band. The fact that the systems both use different modulation, stops possible clashes. Bluetooth uses a “frequency hopping” scheme to avoid problems with other devices and to prevent other devices from interfering with it. Only devices on the same piconet are programmed to “hop” at similar frequencies.