The two hottest technologies for driving wireless networks – Bluetooth for products and 802.11b for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) – currently share the same thoroughfare: the unregulated 2.4 GHz radio band, the frequency most well known as the pathway for our microwave ovens.

As these technologies emerge as common-day solutions, concern has increased over the potential for frequency interference. It could be that Bluetooth activity will do the jamming. Bluetooth "hops" faster through the spectrum than 802.11. That rapid-fire barrage – which gives Bluetooth its device-driving bite – could, however, affect the performance of an 802.11 network.

The rub, of course, is that each is important for the future of wireless connectivity: Bluetooth is well-suited for devices; 802.11 is, in turn, designed specifically for driving WLANs.

Even more to the point, while Bluetooth is designed to enhance mobility and for home-use connectivity, it will also be a major resource for connecting devices within the office – the environment where WLANs are resident. Hence, the real concerns about performance jams.

Solutions, rather than a "winner," is the key strategy for both camps.

The A's and B's of 802.11

One solution deals with 802.11 itself. Currently, the working model for 802.11 is 802.11g. An upgrade to 802.11b, it allows WiFi networks to transmit data at up to 54mbps and is backward compatible with equipment based on earlier 802.11b wireless technology – which means 802.11g has found a home in a slew of products developed by Microsoft, Apple, Hewlett-Packard and others, including Intel. Intel will include an 802.11b / 802.11g component to its new Centrino Pentium-M processor by the end of the year.

As of May 2003, 802.11g was still awaiting official standards status from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE) 802.11 Working Group. Nevertheless, according to a study by the Dell'Oro Group, products based on 802.11g accounted for 16 percent of the wireless networking market's revenue and 17 percent of shipments in the firstquarter of 2003.

There's more to 802.11. 802.11i is aimed at fixing security flaws in the 802.11a and 802.11b/g standards. In the approval process, it uses a security algorithm called Temporal Key Integrity Protocol. Then there's next-generation 802.11b and 802.11g, which is 802.11a. 802.11a will be faster and – importantly for Bluetooth developers – operates in the relatively vacant and nonBluetooth 5 GHz bands, whereas 802.11b and 802.11g share the 2.4GHz radio band. As one networking expert commented, the emergence of 802.11a will "encourage a happy coexistence" between the two.

A Marriage of Equals

One solution for bridging the differences is to combine both technologies to work as a whole. That's something developers like Silicon Wave, a developer of single-chip Bluetooth radios, and Intersil, which develops silicon technology for 802.11b, are working on. In this case, it's a team effort.

Their idea: to develop dual-mode WLAN solutions that will combine Bluetooth and 802.11b radios on the same platform. Step two: expanding that unification to the switching scenario so that both use a common antenna.

For more information on 802.11, visit WECA, the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance. WECA, whose members include most of the high-end vendors, was formed to "guarantee interoperability" across all 802.11b products.

For more information on Bluetooth, visit the official resource, Bluetooth SIG

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