Stands for Universal Serial Bus. USB is a widely used wired connection standard used to connect peripheral devices, such as keyboards, mouses, printers, webcams, scanners, and external storage devices to a computer. USB was designed to standardise the connection of peripheral devices to computers and replace interfaces, such as parallel ports, serial ports, game ports, and ADB ports.
USB Standards
Since its introduction in 1997, a lot of standards and versions have been released. Below are the different USB standards and connectors.
USB 1.0 - A rare standard that supports data transfer rates of up to 1.5 Mb/s.
USB 1.1 - Supports data transfer rates of up to 12 Mb/s.
USB 2.0 - Also known as high-speed USB, this standard supports data transfer rates of up to 480 Mb/s. It was developed by Compaq, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Lucent, Microsoft, NEC, and Phillips and was introduced in 2001.
USB 3.0 - Also known as superspeed USB, this standard supports data transfer rates of up to 5 Gb/s. It was first made available in November 2009 by Buffalo Technology. It improved the previous standard with an increased bandwidth capacity, speed and performance increases, and improved power management.
USB 3.1 - Also known as Superspeed+, this standard was first made available on 31st July 2013. It supports data transfer rates of up to 10 Gb/s.
USB 3.2 - Supports data transfer rates of up to 20 Gb/s. It was released in 2017.
USB 4 - Supports data transfer rates of up to 40 Gb/s. It was released in 2019.
USB Connectors
There are several types of physical layouts for USB connectors. These include:
USB-A (Type A) - This standard has a flat rectangle connector that measures 1.2 cm in length by 0.65 cm in height. It is most commonly used for wired keyboards and mouses.
USB-B (Type B) - This standard has a square connector with slanted exterior corners. It is most commonly found on printers, routers, and game consoles. Some type B connectors do not have a data connection and are only used as a power connection.
Micro USB - This is a smaller version of the USB-A and USB-B connectors and is commonly used for connecting mobile devices.
USB Type C - A newer connector designed to replace both USB-A and USB-B. It consists of smaller ports so that it is more suited to mobile devices.
Advantages and Disadvantages Of USB
The advantages of USB are:
USB has a very high data transfer rate. For example, USB 3.0 can transfer up to 5 Gb/s. This allows large amounts of data to be transferred much more quickly.
Nearly all computers have a USB port. USB 3.0 is also backwards compatible, meaning that a USB 2.0 device can be plugged into a USB 3.0 port, but it will only run at the speed of the technology.
USB provides power to the connected device. It provides data transmission and a low voltage power of 5V over a single cable, so devices that require five volts or less can transfer data over USB without needing an external supply power supply.
Multiple peripherals can be connected to a USB port. It is possible to connect up to 127 different devices to a single USB port.
Low cost. The USB components, connector, and cable are not very expensive to manufacture.
It is a simple standard. USB is a universal standard that eliminates the complexity of different connector types for each peripheral device.
The disadvantages of USB are:
The cable length is relatively short. Although there is no official maximum length, the maximum practical length of USB 3.0 is only 3 metres. Going beyond 3 metres will result in signal degradation and a slower speed.
Since the power is supplied through the USB port, USB devices can be prone to overheating.
History
Before USB was introduced, computers used serial and parallel ports to plug external devices into them. In 1995, several companies, including Compaq, DEC, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, and Nortel began the development of USB. The goal of this standard was to make it easier to connect external devices to computers by replacing the different types of connectors at the back of computers, allowing higher data transfer rates, and simplifying the software configuration of all devices connected to USB. In January 1996, the first version of USB, known as USB 1.0 was released.
Until USB 1.1 was released in August 1998, not many USB devices were available. When USB 2.0 became popular in the early 2000s, more devices began to use the USB standard.
