cellular telephone. Printers, PDAs, desktops, fax machines, keyboards, joysticks and virtually any other digital device can be part of the Bluetooth system. Bluetooth radio technology also provides a universal bridge to existing data networks, a peripheral Access Network antennas Small and large businesses Fibre transport Base station LMDS antenna Central office Video Fibre transport Telephony Customer interface PC/Internet Base station Figure 13.40 LMDS network structure and services. LMDS can also feed radio base stations Data/voice Cable access points replacement Ad hoc networking Figure 13.41 Bluetooth applications interface, and a mechanism to form small private ad hoc groupings of connected devices away from fixed network infrastructures. Designed to operate in a noisy radio frequency environment, the Bluetooth radio uses a fast acknowledgement and frequency hopping scheme to make the link robust. Bluetooth radio modules avoid interference from other signals by hopping to a new frequency after transmitting or receiving a packet. Compared with other systems operating in the same frequency band, the Bluetooth radio typically hops faster and uses shorter packets. This makes the Bluetooth radio more robust than other systems. Understanding Changing Telecommunications - Building a Successful Telecom Business CREATING A PICONET Slave 3 Slave 2 Master Slave 1 Figure 13.42 Example of a piconet Interoperability with other Bluetooth-capable devices is supported by means of pro- files, indicating what functionality a device supports. Devices with the same profiles can communicate. Bluetooth can also be used for the creation of ad hoc networks. Let us take piconet as an example. See Figure 13.42. A Piconet is a collection of devices connected via Bluetooth technology in an ad hoc fashion. A piconet starts with two connected devices, such as a portable PC and cellular phone, and may grow to eight connected devices. All Bluetooth devices are peer units and have identical implementations. However, when establishing a pico