Bluetooth Plans To Boost Speed, Range By Next Year

To keep up with the increased burden, the Bluetooth standard isgetting an upgrade, with longer range, faster speeds, and mesh networking all in the works for 2016. Further plans are on the anvil for supporting smart home technology, industrial automation and location based services and smart infrastructure. The two-times-faster speed, meanwhile, will allow for faster data transfers in essential applications such as medical devices, without consuming more energy.

Additionally the upgrades will specifically address the issue of Bluetooth’s capability to form mesh networks, a functionality which dissidents and other innovators have been shoehorning onto the laggard specs of Bluetooth for a few years.

The SIG will be previewing new features and updates from the 2016 roadmap in the months to come.

With the announcement, Mark Powell, executive director of the Bluetooth SIG, reiterated the group’s mission to continue as a catalyst for industry innovation. “Bluetooth SIG member tools, like the recently launched Bluetooth Developer Studio, and training programs will be updated to ensure strong developer support for these new IoT features”, the association adds. In fact, if the group’s effort simply stumbles, Bluetooth could be forced into far narrower use cases until it eventually becomes just another technology that failed to live up to its potential, King added.

This is the age of wireless gadgets, we use multiple wireless gadgets like headphones, speakers and a few more in our daily life and all these devices connect through Bluetooth.

Announced updates will provide a variety of benefits for the growing number of IoT applications. We are still in the early stages, but the smart homes and smart buildings of the future will require a smarter network to operate. With almost three billion devices shipping annually, Bluetooth is the wireless technology of choice for developers, product manufacturers, and consumers worldwide.