JuralMin / Pixabay
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) today announced the addition of a direction finding feature that holds the potential to “significantly enhance the performance of Bluetooth location services solutions.”
SIG said in a press release that the new feature will allow devices to determine the direction of a Bluetooth signal, thereby enabling the development of Bluetooth proximity solutions that can understand device direction as well as Bluetooth positioning systems that can achieve down to centimeter-level location accuracy.
Bluetooth location services solutions generally fall into 2 categories – proximity solutions & positioning systems. Today, proximity solutions use Bluetooth to understand when 2 devices are near each other, & approximately how far apart. They include item finding solutions such as personal property tags, as well as point-of-interest (PoI) information solutions like proximity marketing beacons. By including the new direction finding feature, Bluetooth proximity solutions can add device direction capability. For example, an item finding solution could not only let a user know when a personal property tag is nearby, but also in what direction, greatly enhancing the user experience.
Positioning systems use Bluetooth to determine the physical location of devices & include real-time locating systems (RTLS), such as those used for asset tracking, as well as indoor positioning systems (IPS), like those for indoor wayfinding. Today, Bluetooth positioning systems can achieve meter-level accuracy when determining the physical location of a device.
By adding the new the direction finding feature, these positioning systems could improve their location accuracy down to the centimeter-level.
“Location services is one of the fastest growing solution areas for Bluetooth technology, and is forecasted to reach over 400 million products per year by 2022,” said Mark Powell, Bluetooth SIG Executive Director.
The direction finding feature is included in version 5.1 of the Bluetooth Core Specification, which is available to developers as of today, and can be found here. In addition, Launch Studio, the Bluetooth SIG tool used to qualify new Bluetooth products, is being updated to support this feature & will also be available to developers as of today, said the release.
