802.15 is a wireless specification defined by IEEE for wireless personal area networks (WPANs), which has characters such as short-range, low power, low cost, small networks and communication of devices within a Personal Operating Space.

The initial version, 802.15.1, was adapted from the Bluetooth specification and is fully compatible with Bluetooth 1.1. Bluetooth becomes widely used specification for wireless communications among portable digital devices including notebook computers, peripherals, cellular telephones, beepers, and consumer electronic devices. The specification also allows for connection to the Internet. 802.15.1/Bluetooth specify standards in on the Physical layer and Data link layer of the OSI model with the following four sub-layers:

RF layer: The air interface is based on antenna power range starting from 0 dBm up to 20 dBm. Bluetooth operates in the 2.4 GHz band and the link range is anywhere from 10 centimeters to 10 meters.

Baseband layer: establishes the Bluetooth physical link between devices forming a piconet - a network of devices connected in an ad hoc fashion using Bluetooth technology.

Link manager: sets up the link between Bluetooth devices. Other functions of the link manager include security, negotiation of Baseband packet sizes, power mode and duty cycle control of the Bluetooth device, and the connection states of a Bluetooth device in a piconet.

Logical Link Control and Adaptation Protocol (L2CAP): provides the upper layer protocols with connectionless and connection-oriented services.

The IEEE 802.15 Working Groups are making progress to improve the Bluetooth standards. They proposes two general categories of 802.15: the low rate 802.15.4 (TG4) and high rate 802.15.3 (TG3). The TG4 version provides data speeds of 20 Kbps or 250 Kbps, low power and low cost solutions. The TG3 version supports data speeds ranging 20 Mbps or greater, for multi-media applications.

IEEE 802.15/Bluetooth, IEEE 802.11/WLAN and IEEE 802.16/WiMAX technologies are complementary to each other and each play a unique role in today's wireless communications. The following table outlines the three technologies:

Protocol Structure

The following chart illustrate the relationship of IEEE.15/Bluetooth to OSI model.

IEEE 802.15 and Bluetooth: WPAN Communications

Related protocols: WLAN, WMAN, WiMAX, IEEE 802.11, IEEE 802.16

Reference: http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802/802.15.html: IEEE 802.15 Specification Download Page