Bluetooth 5: how does it work and what will it change?

Bluetooth serves us every day to transfer data over short distances, it is a technology that can be expensive in resources and can cover a wide range of emissions. In recent days, researchers at UCSD (University of California San Diego) have developed a new technology even more powerful: send a signal via the magnetic field of our body rather than the air.

For the moment, the project of these student-researchers is in the stage of development but the first phases were conclusive and promising. This advance in wireless data transmission could change the way we use our current connected objects, and especially those we carry. The researchers discovered a way to emit a signal through our body, using our natural magnetic field . In addition, this technology could be much safer and cheaper than Bluetooth.

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Bluetooth 5: how does it work and what will it change?

If the latter makes our life easier, he is still unable to function if an obstacle is in his way. The connections, despite the advances of Bluetooth 4.2 , remain unstable and prone to cuts as soon as an element gets in the way. In these cases, communications are harder to maintain and require more energy to cross these barriers. One of these obstacles is the human body but it could finally provide a solution.

By operating a little like an MRI scanner with a much lower power consumption, the prototype that Jiwoong Park wears on his arm represents a kind of armband made up of cables wrapped in PVC. This armband generates magnetic fields through the different parts of the body .

Using this means of the human body, the loss of signal induced by interference between devices would be 10 million times less than with Bluetooth. As a result, connected objects may require less power by operating more easily.

 

 The problem with connected objects that we carry on us as smartwatches is that they do not hold the charge very long because of their small batteries. With this system of communication via the energy released by the human body, we could reduce the consumption of energy in a consequent way - Jiwoong Park, UCSD Ph.D student and lead author

Security side, the system would be much safer too . Bluetooth is spreading about 30 meters around, whereas here, because of the spreading field limited to our body, potential hackers should be particularly close to us if they wanted to intercept your connection.

This technology does not seem really useful for remote objects, but for watches, headphones and other devices carried on us, these  could be a great improvement . Still in the research and development phase, let's wait a little while before seeing if this advance will interest manufacturers enough to find it within new connected devices.