The Bluetooth radio system

A few years ago it was recognized that the vision of a truly low-cost, low- power radio-based cable replacement was feasible. Such a ubiquitous link wo uld provide the basis for portable devices to communicate together in an ad hoc fashion by creating personal area networks which have similar advantag es to their office environment counterpart, the local area network. Bluetoo th(TM) is an effort by a consortium of companies to design a royalty-free t echnology specification enabling this vision. This article describes the ra dio system behind the Bluetooth concept. Designing an ad hoc radio system f or worldwide usage poses several challenges. The article describes the crit ical system characteristics and motivates the design choices that have been made.