7. Bluetooth and IrDA

Although both IrDA and Bluetooth technologies compete with each other, each have their own advantages and disadvantages as well. The Infrared Data Association (IrDA) specifies three IR communication standards - IrDA-Data, IrDA-Control and AIr. IrDA is a point-to-point (points being in the line of sight), narrow angle (30⁰ cone), ad-hoc data transmission standard designed to operate in a range of 0 to 1 meter and at speeds of 9600 bps to 16 Mbps. IrDA is widely available on laptop computers, embedded systems, peripherals etc. with about 50 million units already installed worldwide. Bluetooth however is a Radio Frequency (RF) point-to-multipoint voice and data transfer protocol with a link range of 10 cm to 100 m and data transfer rate of 721 Kbps. Security features are built-in the Bluetooth specification while IrDA has no options for link level security implementations.

Data Exchange
In a common data exchange scenario two people meet to exchange business cards, face to face, in a large conference room or convention center. Many other people with wireless devices are also attempting to do the same thing. In such a situation IrDA excels because of its narrow angle, clear sight point-and-shoot type of implementation while the Bluetooth device with its omni-directional characteristics has problems pin pointing the intended target. However, in data exchange situations where there is no line-of-sight between devices, and/or where one device is mobile, Bluetooth is the obvious choice within the piconet.

IR transmission is mostly unregulated with some concern over eye safety with laser diodes and LEDs while RF transmission is subject to world-wide regulatory policies.

IrDA and Bluetooth technologies provide complementary implementations for data exchange. For some devices, having both Bluetooth and IrDA will provide the best short-range wireless solution. For other devices, the choice of adding Bluetooth or IrDA will be based on the applications and intended usage models.