Bluetooth range is everything these days when it comes to connectivity. & of course, connectivity is what everyone is crazy about these days. These days everyone who has any concern with technology, which would be all of us, wants to know how far their Bluetooth can possibly transmit, how many people can they reach with a single Bluetooth transmitter, how can the range be increased & other such questions. These days it’s all about reaching as many people as you can, with as less resources as you can occupy.
Bluetooth technology first came into the market in 1994 when it was introduced to the public by telecomm giant, Ericsson. Its main purpose was to be a wireless replacement for the RS-232 cables, the cables that we’ve always been using to connect our mobile devices & our PDAs to our PCs & laptops, & the cables we’d almost always misplace. Bluetooth technology was a solution to the problems of managing those cables. This technology is mainly used to transmit data, not too large, over short distances. They use a short wavelength radio frequency to transmit the data from one Bluetooth enabled device to another. Bluetooth uses the unlicensed 2.4 GHz frequency which is available in all the countries except the ones which are using this frequency for military use. In those countries, Bluetooth operates on the frequency 802.11 & has to share this frequency with WLAN. They work pretty much in the same way as infrared devices, but way better functionality. &the more reason for their popularity is that they are secure, & so are the private networks that they make when connecting different Bluetooth enabled devices together.
When we say that the Bluetooth range is short, there are further classifications to “how short” the Bluetooth range is. Different devices are classified into two different categories depending on what their Bluetooth range is;
Class 1 – Devices classified into this category have a Bluetooth range of up to 100 meters. But the 100 meters is the maximum they offer, most of these devices have a range of about 20-30 meters.
Class 2 – Devices classified into this category have a Bluetooth range of up to 30 meters. But, just like Class 1 devices, 30 meters is the maximum range they can offer but most of these devices work on a range between 5-10meters (These are your typical mobile phones.)
Class 1 devices are mostly Bluetooth transmitters that operate in small business areas where they need a secure network for transferring files. The Bluetooth range of these transmitters can be increased but there are certain limitations to how much you can increase that Bluetooth range & what the consequences will be.
First of all, increasing the Bluetooth range will decrease productivity. In an ideal case, increasing the Bluetooth range would mean better performance, but in real world cases, this theory fails completely. Increasing the Bluetooth range means that the device will have to cater to more devices based on a wider area; that will increase the time it takes for the file to be received at the other end & it might even make the service fail. Increasing the Bluetooth range is not the issue, it can definitely be done, but dealing with the consequences is never nice.
Secondly, there are times when increasing the Bluetooth range between a transmitter & a receiver might get you the results you want. But then there are countries who won’t allow you to use Class 1 devices that have output power that ranges up to 20dB. There are certain security concerns regarding such a huge output power. & you can’t argue with a country’s policies.
Bluetooth enabled mobile phones have made life of your average busy person a lot easier. With the ability to use Bluetooth enabled headsets that leave their hands free, all the busy people out there can truly multitask. But again there’s the question of iPhone Bluetooth range. The normal iPhone Bluetooth range is up to 10meters. But there are constraints. The frequency that the Bluetooth technology uses, 2.4 GHz, cannot transmit through water, so water acts as a blocking agent, & Bluetooth also does not transmit well through walls. When you’re transmitting data from one point to the other with a body of water or a wall in between, there will be considerable packet loss which will lead to you either receiving a corrupted file or just static. For example, when you have the Bluetooth headset attached to your right ear & your iPhone is in the left pocket of your jeans, the water in your body might cause you to lose a lot of data. In this case, the iPhone Bluetooth range gets reduced to a mere 1 meter because of the body of water in between. Otherwise, if you are transmitting from one iPhone to another Class 2 device, you could get the maximum iPhone Bluetooth range, i.e. 50 meters, but only if the medium between the 2 devices is air.
The best way to make use of the short Bluetooth range is to be as close to the Bluetooth transmitter as possible. Bluetooth distance really matters when it comes to transferring files between two Bluetooth enabled devices. The lesser the Bluetooth distance between the two devices, the greater will be the speed of the file transfer. & of course, less Bluetooth distance means less obstacles in the medium through which the transmission is passing, so there’s a reduced chance of packet loss.
Everything today depends on connectivity & connectivity depends on range. There are ways to increase the Bluetooth of certain devices, but those devices are the ones classified as Class 1. Increasing Bluetooth range for Class 2 devices is nearly impossible, when you consider the technology of today & the frequency that is used by the Bluetooth technology. But someday in the future, it might be possible for Class 2 devices to have their Bluetooth ranges increased to transmit over hundreds of meters.