Bluetooth over Wi-Fi brings huge speed boosts!!

A new Bluetooth specification for portable devices will piggyback on their built-in Wi-Fi hardware to accelerate file transfer speeds by a huge margin. The process, technically known as



Alternate MAC/PHY will reportedly become an official addition to the Bluetooth specification this April.

It involves having devices search for and recognize each other using standard Bluetooth handshake protocols, and then handing over actual file transfers to the devices' Wi-Fi hardware using an ad-hoc connection while control over the connection remains with the Bluetooth controller. Speeds could jump upto Wi-Fi's current 54 Mb/s rating. But that's not all! According to Broadcom, some of its chips already in circulation can be upgraded with just a firmware flash.

Ref: Chip