How does UWB compare with Bluetooth?
UWB and Bluetooth share characteristics of low power, short range and low cost. However, Bluetooth is a comprehensive wireless standard, including all the various elements of transmitting and recovering data, while UWB is a wireless personal area networking technology – that is, it is the means by which data is transmitted (the “radio interface”). The next version of Bluetooth will use UWB as its transmission technology. In so doing, the speed of data transfer will increase potentially by several hundred times over existing Bluetooth applications. This may allow uses that are not possible at the moment. For example, instead of borrowing a movie in a DVD shop, one could download it at the “shop” (which could be located, for instance, in a supermarket) directly to one’s mobile phone and then transfer it to the DVD player at home.
