Active tags are also available which include a battery.Īs a side note, wireless charging, where you recharge a device by placing it on a charging mat, also takes advantage of this same phenomenon of power transfer between two coupled coils. The advantage of passive tags is they are simple, cheap, small, and last almost indefinitely since there is no battery. Both communication and power transfer are occurring between the two coupled coils. Instead, a passive tag is powered from the electromagnetic field of an NFC reader device. In this case passive means there is no power source. Although payment data is of course encrypted, the extremely short operating range of NFC also helps to eliminate the possibility of someone else nearby hacking the transaction. The most common use for NFC is in contactless payment systems. The two coupled coils essentially form a transformer with an air core. NFC communicates using electromagnetic fields shared between two coils, whereas all other wireless technologies emit radio waves.īecause NFC communicates via two coils that are electromagnetically coupled together, the operating range is only about an inch or two. Near field communication (NFC) is fundamentally different than the other wireless technologies discussed in this article. That speed comes at a price though and that price is mainly higher power consumption. In fact, WiFi Direct is over a hundred times faster than Bluetooth.
#Wifi vs bluetooth speed Bluetooth#
The advantage of WiFi Direct over Bluetooth is mainly faster transfer speeds. But, it doesn’t require an access point, allowing two devices to have a direct connection similar to Bluetooth. It uses the same frequency and offers similar bandwidth and speed. WiFi Direct uses the same basic technology as traditional WiFi. But what if you want to transfer data directly from one device to another without the overhead of an access point? That is where WiFi Direct comes into play. Like Bluetooth, but unlike traditional WiFi, WiFi Direct is a peer-to-peer wireless technology.Īs you probably already know, traditional WiFi sets up an access point that allows many devices to connect to it. This is true even though nearly all phones and tablets support it. It consumes much less power than WiFi, and a lot less than cellular technologies, but still significantly more than technologies such as Bluetooth Low-Energy or Zigbee.Įveryone knows about WiFi, but few people have heard of WiFi Direct. When you connect your phone to a Bluetooth speaker that is a peer-to-peer wireless connection between your phone and the speaker.īecause of the relatively short operating range, Bluetooth is fairly low power. The best known peer-to-peer wireless technology is Bluetooth. In the next section I’ll discuss what are called mesh network technologies which allow many devices to all be interconnected. Only two devices can normally participate in a peer-to-peer connection. Peer-to peer simply means when two devices are connected together for direct communication. You will also get an Excel spreadsheet comparing the various wireless technologies.
#Wifi vs bluetooth speed pdf#
NOTE: This is a long, very detailed article so here’s a free PDF version of it for easy reading and future reference. That being said, I recommend that you read this entire article regardless of your product’s specific needs because you can gain a general understanding of all the wireless technologies available to you. īased on the intended functionality of your product, it should be relatively simple for you to immediately determine which group of technologies you need to consider.įor example, if you require two devices separated by 30 feet to transfer low amounts of data then it doesn’t make sense to use any of the long-distance or high-speed wireless technologies. Download their free cheat sheet 15 Steps to Develop Your New Electronic Hardware Product. This article was originally published on.