Bluetooth Classic, formerly known as Bluetooth and Bluetooth EDR, is a networking standard designed to meet IEEE 802.15.1 and administered by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (BT SIG). Conceived as a 2.4GHz wireless standard to replace wired headsets in 1999, Bluetooth has grown in both scope and capability. By far it is the most prolific wireless standard today adding over 1,000,000 nodes to the network every day, in cell phones, PC’s, consumer and medical electronics applications and many more.

Bluetooth Low Energy is designed to reduce power consumption. It can be put into a sleep mode and only activated for specific event activities such as sending data to a gateway, PC or mobile phone. Furthermore, the maximum power consumption is less than 15 mA and the average power consumption is about 1 uA. The foundations of low energy consumption are short messages and establishing very fast connections (few ms). Using these techniques, energy consumption is reduced to a tenth of a Classic Bluetooth unit. Thus, a small coin cell – such as a CR2032 – is capable of powering a device for up to 10 years of operation.

Adding Wireless Connectivity to a design has never been easier. Operating in the 2.4GHz ISM band, Panasonic’s Wi-Fi RF Modules provide fast implementation of WLAN and Bluetooth.  A flexible, System-on-Chip (SoC) solution, these RF Modules feature low-power operation and increased speed-to-market.

Mesh Networking technology is commonly used in building automation applications such as lighting, security, HVAC, industrial control as well as machine communication and medical monitoring. There are two types of mesh protocols, at 2.4 GHz, routed (directed) meshes based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard like Zigbee and Thread.