dash7 vs. bluetooth

www.haystacktechnologies.com

“Some company” is whispering that Bluetooth can now do everything DASH7 can do. We know this to be wrong. This presentation is an attempt to set the record straight.

- Created in 1994 by Ericsson

- Struggled for many years to find its market

- Today the dominant technology for cable replacement … more than seven billion sold to-date!

- Created in 2009 by the dash7 alliance, with precursors dating back to 1990

- Mainly used in defense sector but expanding into other markets

• Long range: 250m (nom), up to 2km

• Low power: multi-year battery life

• Secure: excellent crypto, “cloaking,” and data sandboxing features

• Open standard, open source stack

• Up to 1m location precision using just signal-strength and “fingerprinting”

• Very inexpensive

• Wireless cable replacement that can provide streaming 1:1 communication

• Can support high data rates, ≥1Mbps

• Established on smartphones, headsets, some keyboards & mice

• Open standard

• Version 4.0 introduces “Bluetooth Low Energy”, a 1-way communications subset that provides new market opportunities in toys, gizmos, and especially health/fitness devices.

• Very inexpensive

strengths

• Data model is flawed, leading to security vulnerabilities (e.g. bluesniping).

• Hugely underutilized: many users never utilize bluetooth at all.

• Very short range, especially indoors: 5-10 meters

• no two-way communications between things that are moving

• 2-way devices (nearly all bt devices today) are not intended to support multi-year battery requirements.

• 1-way devices have privacy issues and can only transfer 49 bytes of data.

• Low data rate and burst packet method are unsuitable for voice, audio, video.

• Not a household name today

• Unfamiliar networking API: not 1:1 cable-replacement like BT or WiFi, so software developers have a learning curve at the beginning.

weaknesses

low energy*

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

✓✓✓✓✓Long range

Penetrates walls

Interacts easily with public networks

Uses listen-before-talk

Supports public-key cryptoand secure “sandboxed”

data environment

Multi-year battery ✓Connects with peers

effortlessly in under two seconds

XX

X ✓✓

*certain non-smartphone devices can take advantage of a newer “low energy”, lower bandwidth version of bluetooth that extends battery life significantly

4.0

X

Feature comparison

1. Long range peer-to-peer text messaging

2. Phone auto-configuration

3. “Smart building” applications

4. Next-generation keyless entry

5. Defense & homeland security

6. Social discovery

7. Smart advertising on posters & billboards

8. Faster pairing of socket-based wireless (WiFi, Bluetooth)

9. Mobile in-store advertising

10. Automotive sensors

10 DASH7 Use Cases That Bluetooth Can’t Touch

#1 Start with text-messaging in RF-unfriendly environments where cellular and WiFi are unavailable ...

DASH7 provides new in-building communication options in the 433

MHz band, which penetrates walls and “bends” around metal obstacles

Bluetooth uses the overcrowded, short-range 2.4 GHz band. It is

blocked by walls or metal obstacles, interferes with WiFi, and can take what seems like forever to

“pair” with another device

#2 Change the Profile of a Handset .... Without “Tapping”

(Next gen NFC chips can include DASH7 for less

than 10 cents and use the same antenna)

• Automatic room-level location awareness

• Faster pairing & un-pairing of mobile apps

• Improved security and battery-life

Auto-configuring a handset using Bluetooth would require Bluetooth to be

operating at near 100% duty, a significant power drain. The result of Bluetooth-

based discovery is several hours reduced battery-life.

#3 Provide new ways of connecting with “things” in an enterprise

Smart EnergyMetering & Control

IT Asset ManagementInfrastructure Monitoring

Parking & Lighting

Bluetooth is not a serious candidate for smart-building projects, due to its short range, poor indoor propagation, lack of

ad-hoc networking, and interference problems with modern WiFi networks

#4 Next Generation keyless entry

Secure-facility apps“Star Trek” doorsSmart elevators

First responder apps

Future DASH7 implementations can share antenna and silicon with 13.56 MHz RFID devices, allowing drop-in upgrades to a huge, globally installed base of access

control systems. Bluetooth is inadvisable for secure applications, but even if that

were fixed, adding it requires new components and their associated

integration costs.

Provide new connectivity options to defense and law

#5: New Military & Homeland Security Apps

DASH7 can discreetly and securely send queries to find friendly

personnel nearby, and it can enable off-grid P2P messaging apps.(N.B. DASH7 is already used extensively by US DoD)

Provide new connectivity options to defense and law enforcement

By comparison, Bluetooth “discovery” requires beaconing every 1 second that can give away location to the enemy, requires

an intermediate server (or a “cloud” lookup), and it has problematic range

limitations in urban or wooded environments.

Hillary7 mutual friendsListening to “The Rushing Wind” by Enation

#6 New social discovery Apps

DASH7 users can “discover” other users, what they are listening to, the game they are playing, their twitter address, or other rich-

data … without requiring an internet lookup

Discovering new friends or things with Bluetooth can take minutes, has enormous

privacy risks, and requires a-priori knowledge of a common cloud-based service just to work at all. Moreover,

existing cloud-based social discovery apps using similar beaconing models have

resulted in multiple cases of stalking and sexual assault.

Smart Posters “2.0”#7 Smarter posters & billboards

DASH7 users can interact with smart posters and billboards

at a distance,

even while moving

Bluetooth cannot easily interact at a distance or while moving, and getting

promotional information from the advertisement is impractical due to

Bluetooth’s slow, user-intensive, and vulnerable pairing model.

#8 Easy pairing of WiFi/Bluetooth devices

Bluetooth and WiFi are so difficult to pair that NFC is already being

deployed to assist. With next-gen NFC+DASH7 chips, pairing assistance can be used without requiring “tapping”

Survey says: “tapping” an NFC-assisted Bluetooth device to initiate pairing is

non-conventional behavior that most of us will forget to use.

D

Location!Engine!

Advertising!Engine!

HypotheticalHandset

User

#9 Mobile in-store advertising

DASH7 reference tag

DASH7 access point

DASH7 can locate retail customers within 1m, enabling

offers and coupons at the point-of-purchase decision. DASH7 can

use sub-$10 battery-powered reference tags to outfit a venue

cheaply and quickly.

D

Location!Engine!

Advertising!Engine!

HypotheticalHandset

User

Bluetooth location systems only can provide suitable accuracy in a model

where you are basically being tracked: your phone is constantly emitting

unsecured beacons. Plus, the location nodes are mains-powered, typ. $150 each, and the location network itself is likely

to degrade in-store WiFi networks.

#10 Automotive sensing

The 433 MHz band used by DASH7 is already deployed in automotive

applications for tire-pressure monitoring (TPMS), keyless entry, and others. DASH7 can become a

single standard used for these applications and also new ones.

Bluetooth operates in the 2.4GHz band, which cannot reliably communicate around metal or other automotive

components. Apart from “hands-free” applications, it is not a serious candidate

for automotive applications.

X

X

X

X

X

✓✓✓✓✓

X ✓✓X ✓

X ✓X

✓X

So just to summarize:

1. Long range peer-peer messaging

2. Phone auto-configuration

3. “Smart building” applications

4. Next-generation keyless entry

5. Defense & homeland security

6. Social discovery

7. Smart posters & billboards

8. Faster pairing of WiFi, Bluetooth

9. Mobile in-store advertising

10. Automotive sensors

X

X

X

✓✓✓✓✓Supports AES 128 crypto

Can be made invisible to non-approved devices

Supports listen-before-talk

X

✓✓

✓

Enables privacy(discovery beacons not

required)

XHas encrypted, “sandboxed” data environment

Wavelength is long enough that “sniping” is impractical

✓Supports channel hopping

before we go, a final word on security

Some key takeaways:

1. A single wireless technology cannot do everything we need (The reason your phone already has multiple radios, for example)

2. Bluetooth became successful when it focused on what it did really well: cable replacement for wireless headsets.

3. End users lose when industry tries to force its existing technologies to perform strange contortions, when a vastly superior technology is available for little or no additional cost (e.g. touchscreen phones, color television)

4. DASH7’s use cases complement Bluetooth use cases and can even make Bluetooth pairing better. Bluetooth has a continued role to play in cable replacement for high bandwidth, short range communications. BLE has a great opportunity, as well, for the markets it was designed to meet: health, fitness, lifestyle, and toys.

5. DASH7 should be part of planning, today, for products that require a combination of long range/low cost/low power/low bandwidth. Also as a “Plan B” for companies experimenting with BLE or NFC technologies.

For more info, visit www.haystacktechnologies.com

or email us at info@haystacktechnologies.com