The new Bluetooth Core Specification v1.2 was designed for developers by developers with a view toward a more positive user experience and with preparedness for the future wireless world. The current specification is included in over 1000 products as diverse as computer mice and mobile phones to automobiles and various computing products. Version 1.2 is not only intended to be backwards compatible with these products, but is also intended to set the stage for the development of a growing number of mainstream products such as mobile phones, headsets, PDAs, MP3 players, cameras and laptops in a consumer's Personal Area Network.
Adaptive Frequency Hopping (AFH) is one of many new features of the specification. AFH was explicitly designed to reduce interference between wireless technologies sharing the 2.4 GHz spectrum. Cordless telephones, microwave ovens and certain Wireless Local Area Networking (WLAN) technologies including IEEE 802.11b generally share the same wireless frequencies as Bluetooth wireless technology. AFH works within the spectrum to take advantage of the available frequencies without limiting the Bluetooth transmission to a set of frequencies occupied by other technologies. This ' adaptive hopping' allows for more efficient transmission within the spectrum thereby benefiting the end users with greater performance, even if using other technologies along with the Bluetooth wireless technology.
Other features of v1.2 include:
Enhanced Voice Processing which will improve the quality of voice connections, particularly in noisy environments, using error detection methodologies.
Enhanced Quality of Service (QOS) which will increase the performance of multi-point implementations where one radio can service more than one client at one time with better traffic management scheduling.
Faster connections to other Bluetooth wireless devices which will improve the end user experience.
