What is Bluetooth?

Bluetooth is a technology that almost anyone is familiar with. It dates back to 1989 when it was invented by the CTO of Ericsson (remember them?!). It is a technology for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances using radio waves. Bluetooth generally operates at a frequency of 2.4GHz. It is a packet-based protocol, which essentially means that data is transmitted in packets over a digital network. After living its first few years without a uniform name, it was christened Bluetooth in 1997 after the 10^th Century Danish King Harald Bluetooth. A name that has remained ever such. 

In 2006, Developers at Nokia developed a new Bluetooth Standard which became known as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and this is what VenuIQ uses. BLE was developed to overcome challenges that developers had with both traditional Bluetooth and Wifi technology. It was BLE that enabled the Internet of Things world to really take off. Unlike traditional Bluetooth, BLE doesn’t insist on an authenticated handshake (like you would on your phone) but rather sends advertising packets between devices that contain data that can be parsed by the receiving device. This has significant advantages over Wifi in this type of use case, mainly in terms of being hugely more accurate in terms of positioning, ease of deployment of more receiving units (Gateways), and meshing Gateways together to reach more areas with poor network connectivity and lower power usage. In addition, it transmits advertising packets over three separate frequencies to reduce interference (a common issue with RFID).  

Whilst the most common use of Bluetooth is connecting mobile phones to cars, AirPods or other devices, as BLE it is used in many more other industries, notably Healthcare, and of course, events.