Infrared vs Bluetooth for Short-Range Solutions

Communication without cables has made computers with untethered peripheral devices possible. For short-range communications in the home or office, two technologies are currently available: Bluetooth and infrared (IR) devices. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but both approaches can also provide complementary solutions for wireless data transfer between devices.

Today, the pervasive use of cableless data transfer has changed the way that people communicate. This trend is driven by the proliferation of mobile information appliances such as mobile telephones and handheld personal digital assistants (PDAs). In fact, further expansion of the market is expected with the growth of mobile Internet devices such as next generation multimedia telephones, wireless-application-protocol (WAP) telephones and smart telephones.

According to Strategy Analytics, a high-technology market consulting firm, the global market for these devices will increase from a current annual level of $10 billion to an annual level of $73 billion by 2005. There is also a trend toward the convergence of capabilities in mobile communications and Internet access in order to provide mobile consumers with the latest information.

Although Bluetooth is often touted as a "replacement" for the IR devices of the Infrared Data Association (IrDA), the two technologies are actually quite complementary. The charter of IrDA for these lowpower, IR devices is to provide low-cost, interoperable, market-adopted standards for communications between IrDA-enabled devices. Members of the IrDA include established multinational companies such as Agilent Technologies, Apple, Compaq, Casio, Ericsson, Extended Systems, HewlettPackard Co., Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Palm Computing, Sharp and Sony. The IrDA primary specifications include aligning devices point-to-point at an angle of 30 deg. and a distance of 0 to I m with data-transmission speeds between 9.6 kb/s to 4 Mb/s (with 16 Mb/s under development).

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