BLUETOOTH (WIRELESS) TECHNOLOGY

Over the last few years, radio-frequency technologies have been

developing

as

relevant

communication

support.

applications

our

in

and

increasingly

Together

everyday

life,

with

the

the

usage

indispensable
innumerable
of

wireless

communications in industrial environment seems to start being of

great interest to the scientific community.
The possibilities of the wireless technologies to add value in
monitoring,

control

and

industrial-system

configuration

are

tremendous
Key benefits are the elimination of cables and connectors from
the manufacturing floors, resulting in shorter installation times
and reduced machine maintenance, and the potential for a
flexible topology and mobile applications. Furthermore, the
wireless technologies will facilitate communications with rotating
and

moving

machine

parts

and

enable

systems

to

be

programmed, actuated and automatically report their status back

to a central controller or to an operator with a laptop or another
wireless device.

BLUETOOTH TECHNOLOGY
Bluetooth is a standard for short-range radio communications,
originally developed as a cable replacement to connect portable
devices. It uses the Industrial Scientific Medicine radio band (ISM)

2.45 GHz and Frequency Hopped Spread Spectrum (FHSS) as medium

access. The required and nominal range is 10m (transmit power
0dBm) and an external power amplifier can be added to extend
the range up to 100m.
The raw bit rate is 1 Mbps, with a Gaussian Frequency Shift Keying
(GFSK) modulation technique. Bluetooth supports point to point and
point to multi-point connections, which can be established
automatically and dynamically between Bluetooth units, e.g. once
a laptop enters the range of some wireless devices.

INDUSTRIAL REQUIREMENTS
Mission-critical applications in industrial environment represent an
interesting prospect for the use of Bluetooth. As a low cost, low
power, short-range radio technology, it would be particularly
suitable for this kind of applications, where the radio link
reliability is very important in order to reach high demands on
deterministic behavior and real-time performance.
Industrial equipment is often installed in harsh environments, with
extreme temperature, vibration and other radiating sources. The
ISM band is a globally available, license-free band, reserved for
general use by Industrial, Scientific and Medicine applications.
This involves the presence of other users or polluters of the
shared spectrum.
The Bluetooth standard has been built in order to guarantee
reliability and robustness in presence of interference. The

Frequency Hopping Code Division Multiple Access (FH-CDMA) and

the

Error

Correction

techniques

involved

in

the

system

specifications can assure a good degree of interoperability with

other radio networks or generally radiating sources.