Bluetooth

Radio Layer

Bluetooth Radio Layer

The Bluetooth Radio (layer) is the lowest defined layer of the Bluetooth specification. The radio layer moves the bits from master to slave, or vice versa(similar to physical layer in OSI model). It is a low-power system with a range of 10 meters operating in the same 2.4-GHz ISM It defines the requirements of the Bluetooth transceiver device.

Main Contents concerned to Radio Layer

Frequency Bands and Channel Arrangement (includes spread spectrum technology, FHSS) Transmitter Characteristics Receiver Characteristics

Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum

BT System uses Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum for transmission. The Bluetooth radio accomplishes spectrum spreading by frequency hopping in 79 hops displaced by 1 MHz, starting at 2.402GHz and finishing at 2.480GHz. It has a fast hopping rate of 1600 hops/sec which makes the slot time as 625 sec.

How actually it happens.

For frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS)systems, the total available bandwidth is split into many channels of smaller bandwidth. Transmitter and receiver stay on one of these channels for a certain time and then hop to another channel. This system implements FDM & TDM.

 What is Hopping Sequence? The pattern of channel usage is called the hopping sequence. What is dwell time? The time spent on a channel with a certain frequency is called the dwell/slot time. -- Since in BT, transmitter performs 1600 hops between channels in 1 sec, its dwell time is 1/1600 sec.

FHSS cont.(Fast and Slow Hopping)

 In slow hopping, the transmitter uses one frequency for several bit periods. Slow hopping systems are typically cheaper. They are not as immune to narrowband interference as fast hopping systems.

 In fast hopping, the transmitter uses several frequencies for one bit period. Fast hopping systems are expensive because the transmitter and receiver have to stay synchronized(at lower tolerance) to perform hopping at more or less the same points in time. They handle narrowband interference more efficiently.

FHSS Transmitter Workflow

Steps in transmitting
Modulation of user data according to one of the digital-to-analog modulation schemes (e.g., FSK). This results in a narrowband signal. Perform frequency hopping in 2nd modulation, based on a hopping sequence(which is fed to frequency synthesizer to generate carrier frequencies). Transmit the spread transmit signal received after 2nd modulation.

FHSS Receiver Workflow

NB. The receiver of an FHSS system has to know the hopping sequence and must stay synchronized. It performs the inverse operations of the modulation to reconstruct user data.

FHSS Receiver Workflow(cont)

Transceiver Chrateristics
Power Classes: Each device is classified into 3 power classes, Power Class 1, 2 & 3. Power Class 1: is designed for long range (~100m) devices, with a max output power of 20 dBm, Power Class 2: for ordinary range devices (~10m) devices, with a max output power of 4 dBm, Power Class 3: for short range devices (~10cm) devices, with a max output power of 0 dBm(1mW).

Transmitter Chrateristics(cont)
Modulation Characteristics: The Bluetooth radio module uses FSK (Frequency Shift Keying) where a binary one is represented by a positive frequency deviation and a binary zero by a negative frequency deviation. Sensitivity Level: The receiver must have a sensitivity level for which the bit error rate (BER) 0.1% is met. For Bluetooth this means an actual sensitivity level of -70dBm or better.