Last week, the latest and greatest member of the Bluetooth family of wireless specifications was announced to the world: Bluetooth 5! What main changes are in store? Read the FAQ (PDF), or dig into the full spec (bigger PDF) at 2,800 pages.
Their big-print selling points include “up to 4x the range, 2x the speed, and 8x the broadcasting message capacity” to power the Internet of Things. Etcetera. [Akiba] pointed out via Twitter that they get the fourfold increase in range by adding an extra zero to the “Maximum Output Power” spec, going from 10 mW maximum power to 100 mW. That would do it.
In less snarky news, they’re also allowing for a lower-bitrate mode that will also increase range without simply boosting the power. The spec is actually being changed to let the user work out their optimal blend of power, range, and bitrate. We’re down with that. But you’re not getting 4x the range and 2x the speed without paying the bandwidth piper. That’s just physics.
If you use the beacon mode in Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), you’ll be happy to hear that they’re lengthening the beacon packet from 31 bytes to 255, so you can send a bunch more data without consuming too much power. That’s the “8x”. Bluetooth 5.0 is also backwards compatible with Bluetooth 4.2, so you don’t have to redo anything if you don’t want to take advantage of the newer features. Your current BLE beacons will keep working.
Finally, there’s some contention-detection and other bandwidth optimizing going on, which is welcome in our crowded 2.4 GHz office spectrum. Our guess is that’s where the “2x speed” is largely coming from, but there are about 2,750 pages that we haven’t read yet, so if you’re digging into the spec, let us know what you find in the comments.
Thanks to [Akiba] for tipping us off to this via Twitter. Go check out his great talk on getting hacker stuff in Shenzhen that was presented at the SuperCon.
I’d rather they top-bill any improvements in power savings or security. No one is going to be impressed with range and speed increases, we already have wifi.
I’m actually doing some experimentation where a range boost would really help out and reduce costs of the system overall
Bluetooth SIG are greedy assholes. Fuck their stupid licensing scam. $8000 for a BLE listing? Really?
You are not required to pay that amount to develop products that comply with the spec. You are required to pay that amount if you tell anyone it is “Bluetooth compliant”
Same for the USB licencing (1700$ per year), the SD card licencing (3000$ per year).
USB-IF is $4000/yr which gets you USB-IF membership or $3500 every 2 years just for the USB logo (no membership).
I kinda wonder where all that money people pay into it goes.
Sportscars and blow for the company CEO.
I was thinking the same thing along with trips to the Bahamas and Thailand.
You should vote a not-so-balanced billionaire in power to ‘fix’ things. I hear it’s foolproof.
Just buy a module or chip that’s already certified.
Actually, using a chip or module with a full End Product qualification doesn’t save you from a listing fee anymore. You might not have to pay for extra testing, but you still have to buy a Declaration ID ($8k). Annual fee paying members get them at $4k, and start-ups can get their first two for $2,500.
And that is why i nowadays refer to them as assholes.
That’s one reason why China is beating everyone at the game as they simply do not pay those fees and can get a product out without that extra overhead.
the best use than ever: alchool and hookers :-)
Hopefully the software stacks will be improved as well.
The 2x speed probably refers to an increase from 1Mbit/s to 2Mbit/s bitrate. This is pretty weird, as the bitrate never has been the speed (throughput) bottleneck of BLE.
” …4x the range…going from 10 mW maximum power to 100 mW. That would do it.”
No it wouldn’t. That’s only 10dB. You need 6dB per doubling of range. That difference would only net you about 1.5x more range.
“up to four times the range”.
Only in case of an omnidirectional antenna. Which this probably has though in most practical cases. But not necessarily always, such as in their lab, which is why they can make these claims I guess :P
They also made chances to the protocol didn’t they? Since they mention it’s only for 5 to 5 as I recall.
And yes you can make a improved protocol that is better with weak signals.
Or ‘changes’ even :)
10dB is more than 6dB, it can’t be less than double the range. The theoretical range increase from 10mW to 100mW is by sqrt(10) ~ 3.