Bluetooth will soon be "erased"

Researchers at the University of Washington have discovered a new technology that could replace Bluetooth with higher speeds and less power.

Bluetooth has been a great invention for wirelessly connecting devices over short distances and using low power. However, engineers are developing a new type of Wi-Fi technology that could replace Bluetooth and use even less power.

Bluetooth was once an incredibly useful invention.

Called Passive Wi-Fi, the technology is designed to transmit data at short ranges with 10,000 times less power than current Wi-Fi chipsets and 1,000 times less power than Bluetooth LE and ZigBee. It was developed by a team of computer scientists at the University of Washington.

The appeal of Passive Wi-Fi is that it uses only one digital baseband in the Wi-Fi chip, whereas today most Wi-Fi chips use both digital and analog radio frequencies.

One of the researchers at the University of Washington explains the technology as follows: “The key to Passive Wi-Fi is that it uses reflection to create Wi-Fi packets. A connected device generates continuous radio signals. The baseband processor on a passive device then reflects these radio signals back to form Wi-Fi packets that can be decoded by other devices, including smartphones.

Don’t expect speeds to match those of your home Wi-Fi, but research suggests that speeds of up to 11Mbps are still much faster than Bluetooth. Passive Wi-Fi could be used as the glue that powers the Internet of Things in future homes. And ultimately, connected devices will need a way to communicate without draining your power kilowatts or running into the same limitations as Bluetooth.

According to ICTNews