Advance in Electronic and Electric Engineering.

ISSN 2231-1297, Volume 4, Number 6 (2014), pp. 655-662

Research India Publications
http://www.ripublication.com/aeee.htm

A Comparative Study of Wireless Protocols:

Bluetooth, UWB, ZigBee, and Wi-Fi
Karunakar Pothuganti1 and Anusha Chitneni2
1

Department of Electrical Engineering, Samara University, Semera, Ethiopia.

2
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering,
SICET, Hyderabad, India.

Abstract
Bluetooth (over IEEE 802.15.1), ultra-wideband (UWB, over IEEE
802.15.3), ZigBee (over IEEE 802.15.4), and Wi-Fi (over IEEE
802.11) are four protocol standards for short range wireless
communications with low power consumption. From an application
point of view, Bluetooth is intended for a cordless mouse, keyboard,
and hands-free headset, UWB is oriented to high-bandwidth
multimedia links, ZigBee is designed for reliable wirelessly networked
monitoring and control networks, while Wi-Fi is directed at computerto computer connections as an extension or substitution of cabled
networks. In this paper, we provide a study of these popular wireless
communication standards, evaluating their main features and
behaviours in terms of various metrics, including the transmission
time, data coding efficiency, complexity, and power consumption. It is
believed that the comparison presented in this paper would benefit
application engineers in selecting an appropriate protocol.
Index Terms: Wireless protocols, Bluetooth, ultra-wideband (UWB),
ZigBee, Wi-Fi, short-range communications.

1. Introduction
The short-range wireless scene is currently held by four protocols: the Bluetooth, and
UWB, ZigBee, and Wi-Fi, which are corresponding to the IEEE 802.15.1, 802.15.3,
802.15.4, and 802.11a/b/g standards, respectively. IEEE defines the physical (PHY)
and MAC layers for wireless communications over an action range around 10-100
meters. For Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, Ferro and Potorti compared their main features and

656

Karunakar Pothuganti & Anusha Chitneni

behaviors in terms of various metrics, including capacity, network topology, security,

quality of service support, and power consumption. In Wang et al. compared the MAC
of IEEE 802.11e and IEEE 802.15.3. Their results showed that the throughput
difference between them is quite small. In addition, the power management of
802.15.3 is easier than that of 802.11e. For ZigBee and Bluetooth, Baker studied their
strengths and weaknesses for industrial applications, and claimed that ZigBee over
802.15.4 protocol can meet a wider variety of real industrial needs than Bluetooth due
to its long term battery operation, greater useful range, flexibility in a number of
dimensions, and reliability of the mesh networking architecture. In this paper, after an
overview of the mentioned four short range wireless protocols, we attempt to make a
preliminary comparison of them and then specifically study their transmission time,
data coding efficiency, protocol complexity, and power consumption. The rest of this
paper is organized as follows. Section 2 briefly introduces the wireless protocols
including Bluetooth, UWB, ZigBee, and Wi-Fi. Next, a comprehensive evaluation of
them is described in Section 3. Then, in Section 4, the complexity and power
consumption are compared based on IEEE standards and commercial off the- shelf
wireless products, respectively. Finally, Section 5 concludes this paper.

2. Wireless Protocols
This section introduces the Bluetooth, UWB, ZigBee, and Wi-Fi protocols, which
corresponds to the IEEE 802.15.1,802.15.3, 802.15.4, and 802.11a/b/g standards,
respectively. The IEEE defines only the PHY and MAC layers in its standards. For
each protocol, separate alliances of companies worked to develop specifications
covering the network, security and application profile layers so that the commercial
potential of the standards could be realized. The material presented in this section is
widely available in the literature. Hence, the major goal of this paper is not to
contribute to research in the area of wireless standards, but to present a comparison of
the four main short-range wireless networks.
2.1 Bluetooth over IEEE 802.15.1

Bluetooth, also known as the IEEE 802.15.1 standard is based on a wireless radio
system designed for short-range and cheap devices to replace cables for computer
peripherals, such as mice, keyboards, joysticks, and printers. This range of applications
is known as wireless personal area network (WPAN). Two connectivity topologies are
defined in Bluetooth: the piconet and scatternet. A piconet is a WPAN formed by a
Bluetooth device serving as a master in the piconet and one or more Bluetooth devices
serving as slaves. A frequency-hopping channel based on the address of the master
defines each piconet. All devices participating in communications in a given piconet
are synchronized using the clock of the master. Slaves communicate only with their
master in a point-to-point fashion under the control of the master. The masters
transmissions may be either point-to-point or point-tomultipoint. Also, besides in an
active mode, a slave device can be in the parked or standby modes so as to reduce
power consumptions. A scatternet is a collection of operational Bluetooth piconets
overlapping in time and space. Two piconets can be connected to form a scatternet. A

A Comparative Study of Wireless Protocols: Bluetooth, UWB, ZigBee, and Wi-Fi 657
Bluetooth device may participate in several piconets at the same time, thus allowing
for the possibility that information could flow beyond the coverage area of the single
piconet. A device in a scatternet could be a slave in several piconets, but master in only
one of them.
2.2. UWB over IEEE 802.15.3
UWB has recently attracted much attention as an indoor short-range high-speed
wireless communication. One of the most exciting characteristics of UWB is that its
bandwidth is over 110 Mbps (up to 480 Mbps) which can satisfy most of the
multimedia applications such as audio and video delivery in home networking and it
can also act as a wireless cable replacement of high speed serial bus such as USB 2.0
and IEEE 1394. Following the United States and the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) frequency allocation for UWB in February 2002, the Electronic
Communications Committee (ECC TG3) is progressing in the elaboration of a
regulation for the UWB technology in Europe. From an implementation point of view,
several solutions have been developed in order to use the UWB technology in
compliance with the FCCs regulatory requirements. Among the existing PHY
solutions, in IEEE 802.15 Task Group 3a (TG3a), multiband orthogonal frequencydivision multiplexing (MB-OFDM), a carrier-based system dividing UWB bandwidth
to sub-bands, and direct-sequence UWB (DS-UWB), an impulse-based system that
multiplies an input bit with the spreading code and transmits the data by modulating
the element of the symbol with a short pulse have been proposed by the WiMedia
Alliance and the UWB Forum, respectively. The TG3a was established in January
2003 to define an alternative PHY layer of 802.15.3. However, after three years of a
jammed process in IEEE 802.15.3a, supporters of both proposals, MB-OFDM and DSUWB, supported the shut down of the IEEE 802.15.3a task group without conclusion
in January 2006. On the other hand, IEEE 802.15.3b, the amendment to the 802.15.3
MAC sublayer has been approved and released in March 2006.
2.3. ZigBee over IEEE 802.15.4
ZigBee over IEEE 802.15.4, defines specifications for lowrate WPAN (LR-WPAN)
for supporting simple devices that consume minimal power and typically operate in the
personal operating space (POS) of 10m. ZigBee provides self-organized, multi-hop,
and reliable mesh networking with long battery lifetime. Two different device types
can participate in an LR-WPAN network: a full-function device (FFD) and a reduced
function device (RFD). The FFD can operate in three modes serving as a PAN
coordinator, a coordinator, or a device. An FFD can talk to RFDs or other FFDs, while
an RFD can talk only to an FFD. An RFD is intended for applications that are
extremely simple, such as a light switch or a passive infrared sensor. They do not have
the need to send large amounts of data and may only associate with a single FFD at a
time. Consequently, the RFD can be implemented using minimal resources and
memory capacity. After an FFD is activated for the first time, it may establish its own
network and become the PAN coordinator. All star networks operate independently

658

Karunakar Pothuganti & Anusha Chitneni

from all other star networks currently in operation. This is achieved by choosing a
PAN identifier, which is not currently used by any other network within the radio
sphere of influence. Once the PAN identifier is chosen, the PAN coordinator can allow
other devices to join its network. An RFD may connect to a cluster tree network as a
leave node at the end of a branch, because it may only associate with one FFD at a
time. Any of the FFDs may act as a coordinator and provide synchronization services
to other devices or other coordinators. Only one of these coordinators can be the
overall PAN coordinator, which may have greater computational resources than any
other device in the PAN.
2.4. Wi-Fi over IEEE 802.11a/b/g
Wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) includes IEEE 802.11a/b/g standards for wireless local area
networks (WLAN). It allows users to surf the Internet at broadband speeds when
connected to an access point (AP) or in ad hoc mode. The IEEE 802.11 architecture
consists of several components that interact to provide a wireless LAN that supports
station mobility transparently to upper layers. The basic cell of an IEEE 802.11 LAN is
called a basic service set (BSS), which is a set of mobile or fixed stations. If a station
moves out of its BSS, it can no longer directly communicate with other members of the
BSS. Based on the BSS, IEEE 802.11 employs the independent basic service set
(IBSS) and extended service set (ESS) network configurations. The IBSS operation is
possible when IEEE 802.11 stations are able to communicate directly without any AP.
Because this type of IEEE 802.11 LAN is often formed without pre-planning, for only
as long as the LAN is needed, this type of operation is often referred to as an ad hoc
network. Instead of existing independently, a BSS may also form a component of an
extended form of network that is built with multiple BSSs. The architectural
component used to interconnect BSSs is the distribution system (DS). The DS with
APs allow IEEE 802.11 to create an ESS network of arbitrary size and complexity.
This type of operation is often referred to as an infrastructure network.

3. Comparative Study
Table 1 summarizes the main differences among the four protocols. Each protocol is
based on an IEEE standard. Obviously, UWB and Wi-Fi provide a higher data rate,
while Bluetooth and ZigBee give a lower one. In general, the Bluetooth, UWB, and
ZigBee are intended for WPAN communication (about 10m), while Wi-Fi is oriented
to WLAN (about 100m). However, ZigBee can also reach 100m in some applications.
FCC power spectral density emission limit for UWB emitters operating in the UWB
band is -41.3 dBm/Mhz. This is the same limit that applies to unintentional emitters in
the UWB band, the so called Part 15 limit. The nominal transmission power is 0 dBm
for both Bluetooth and ZigBee, and 20 dBm for Wi-Fi.

A Comparative Study of Wireless Protocols: Bluetooth, UWB, ZigBee, and Wi-Fi 659
Table 1: Comparison of the Bluetooth, UWB, Zigbee, And Wi-Fi Protocols.
Standard
IEEE spec..
Frequency band

Bluetooth
802.15.1
2.4GHz

Max signal rate

Nominal range
Nominal TX
power
Number of RF
channels
Channel
bandwidth
Modulation type

1 Mb/s
10 m
0 - 10 dBm
79

UWB
802.15.3a
3.1-10.6
GHz
110Mb/s
10 m
-41.3
dBm/MHz
(1-15)

Zigbee
802.15.4
868/915 MHz;
2.4 GHz
250kb/s
10-100 m
(-25) - 0 dBm

Wi-Fi
802.11a/b/g
2.4 GHz; 5 GHz

1/10;16

14(2.4GHz)

54Mb/s
100 m
15 - 20 dBm

1MHZ

500MHz- 0.3/0.6 MHz; 2

22MHz
7.5GHz
MHz
GFSK
BPSK,
BPSK (+ ASK),
BPSK, QPSK
QPSK
O-QPSK
COFDM, CCK, MQAM
Spreading
FHSS
DS-UWB,
DSSS
DSSS, CCK,
MB-OFDM
OFDM
Coexistence
Adaptive freq.
Adaptive Dynamic freq.
Dynamic freq.
mechanism
hopping
freq.
selection
selection transmit
hopping
power control
(802.11h)
Basic cell
Piconet
Piconet
Star
BSS
Extension of the
Scatternet
Peer-peer
Cluster treeESS
basic cell
mesh
Max number of
8
8
> 65000
2007
cell nodes
Data protection
16-bit CRC
32-bit CRC
16-bit CRC
32-bit CRC

3.1 Radio Channels

Bluetooth, ZigBee and Wi-Fi protocols have spread spectrum techniques in the 2.4
GHz band, which is unlicensed in most countries and known as the industrial,
scientific, and medical (ISM) band. Bluetooth uses frequency hopping (FHSS) with 79
channels and 1 MHz bandwidth, while ZigBee uses direct sequence spread spectrum
(DSSS) with 16 channels and 2 MHz bandwidth. Wi-Fi uses DSSS (802.11),
complementary code keying (CCK, 802.11b), or OFDM modulation (802.11a/g) with
14 RF channels (11 available in US, 13 in Europe, and just 1 in Japan) and 22 MHz
bandwidth. UWB uses the 3.1-10.6 GHz, with an unapproved and jammed 802.15.3a
standard, of which two spreading techniques, DSUWB and MB-OFDM, are available.

660

Karunakar Pothuganti & Anusha Chitneni

3.2 Network Size

The maximum number of devices belonging to the networks building cell is 8 (7
slaves plus one master) for a Bluetooth and UWB piconet, over 65000 for a ZigBee
star network, and 2007 for a structured Wi-Fi BSS. All the protocols have a provision
for more complex network structures built from the respective basic cells: the
scatternet for Bluetooth, peer-to-peer for UWB, cluster tree or mesh networks for
ZigBee, and the ESS for Wi- Fi.
3.3Security
All the four protocols have the encryption and authentication mechanisms. Bluetooth
uses the E0 stream cipher and shared secret with 16-bit cyclic redundancy check
(CRC), while UWB and ZigBee adopt the advanced encryption standard (AES) block
cipher with counter mode (CTR) and cipher block chaining message authentication
code (CBC-MAC), also known as CTR with CBC-MAC (CCM), with 32-bit and 16bit CRC, respectively. In 802.11, Wi-Fi uses the RC4 stream cipher for encryption and
the CRC-32 checksum for integrity. However, several serious weaknesses were
identified by cryptanalysts, any wired equivalent privacy (WEP) key can be cracked
with readily available software in two minutes or less, and thus WEP was superseded
by Wi-Fi protected access 2 (WPA2), i.e. IEEE 802.11i standard, of which the AES
block cipher and CCM are also employed.
3.4. Transmission Time
The transmission time depends on the data rate, the message size, and the distance
between two nodes. The formula for transmission time (s) can be described as:
Ttx (Ndata (Ndata / NmaxPld Novhd))Tbit Tprop
(1)
where Ndata is the data size, NmaxPld is the maximum payload size, Novhd is the
overhead size, Tbit is the bit time, and Tprop is the propagation time between any two
devices. For simplicity, the propagation time is negligible. Note that the maximum data
rate 110 Mbit/s of UWB is adopted from an unapproved 802.15.3a standard. The
transmission time for the ZigBee is longer than the others because of the lower data
rate (250 Kbit/s), while UWB requires less transmission time compared with the
others. Obviously, the result also shows the required transmission time is proportional
to the data payload size and disproportional to the maximum data rate.
3.5 Power Consumption
Bluetooth and ZigBee are intended for portable products, short ranges, and limited
battery power. Consequently, it offers very low power consumption and, in some
cases, will not measurably affect battery life. UWB is proposed for shortrange and high
data rate applications. On the other hand, Wi-Fi is designed for a longer connection
and supports devices with a substantial power supply. Obviously, the Bluetooth and
ZigBee protocols consume less power as compared with UWB and Wi-Fi. Based on
the bit rate, a comparison of normalized energy consumption is provided in Fig. 1.
From the mJ/Mb unit point of view, the UWB and Wi- Fi have better efficiency in

A Comparative Study of Wireless Protocols: Bluetooth, UWB, ZigBee, and Wi-Fi 661
energy consumption. In summary, Bluetooth and ZigBee are suitable for low data rate
applications with limited battery power (such as mobile devices and battery-operated
sensor networks), due to their low power consumption leading to a long lifetime. On
the other hand, for high data rate implementations (such as audio/video surveillance
systems), UWB and Wi-Fi would be better solutions because of their low normalized
energy consumption.

Fig. 1: Comparison of the normalized energy consumption for each protocol.

4. Conclusions
This paper has presented a broad overview of the four most popular wireless standards,
Bluetooth, UWB, ZigBee, and Wi-Fi with a quantitative evaluation in terms of the
transmission time, data coding efficiency, protocol complexity, and power
consumption. Furthermore, the radio channels, coexistence mechanism, network size,
and security are also preliminary compared. This paper is not to draw any conclusion
regarding which one is superior since the suitability of network protocols is greatly
influenced by practical applications, of which many other factors such as the network
reliability, roaming capability, recovery mechanism, chipset price, and installation cost
need to be considered in the future.

References
[1]

[2]

[3]

R. Zurawski, Guest editorial of special section on factory communication

systems, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 49, no. 6, pp. 1186-1188, Dec.
2002.
F. L. Lian, J .R. Moyne, and D. M. Tilbury, Performance evaluation of
control networks: Ethernet, ControlNet, and DeviceNet, IEEE Contr. Syst.
Mag. vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 66-83, Feb. 2001.
A. Willig, An architecture for wireless extension of Profibus, in Proc. IEEE
Int. Conf. Ind. Electron. (IECON03), Roanoke, VA, Nov. 2003, pp. 23692375.

662
[4]

[5]

[6]

Karunakar Pothuganti & Anusha Chitneni

E. Ferro and F. Potorti, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless protocols: A survey
and a comparison, IEEE Wireless Commun., vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 12-16, Feb.
2005.
X. Wang, Y. Ren, J. Zhao, Z. Guo, and R. Yao, Comparison of IEEE 802.11e
and IEEE 802.15.3 MAC, in Proc. IEEE CAS Symp. Emerging Technologies:
Mobile & Wireless Commun, Shanghai, China, May, 2004, pp. 675-680.
Baker, N. ZigBee and Bluetooth: Strengths and weaknesses for industrial
applications, IEE Computing & Control Engineering, vol. 16, no. 2, pp 2025, April/May 2005.