For years, Bluetooth® technology has powered a wide range of proximity solutions in smart buildings, smart homes, and smart cities around the world. According to the 2018 Bluetooth Market Update, annual shipments of Bluetooth Location Services devices are forecasted to grow 10x by 2022. This widespread adoption and success helped create a market demand for enhancing the user experience with proximity solutions.

Proximity solutions use Bluetooth technology to understand where two devices are relative to each other. To date, these solutions have been based on one device using Bluetooth to understand if another device is within range and, in many cases, estimating the distance to the other device using received signal strength (RSSI) measurements. Point of interest (PoI) information and item finding are two of the most popular Bluetooth proximity solutions. To enhance the user experience of common proximity solutions, the Bluetooth member community added a direction finding capability to Bluetooth technology.

Precise PoI

PoI information solutions were one of the first Bluetooth® Location Services to come to market. In a PoI information solution, small, battery-powered Bluetooth enabled transmitters, often referred to as beacons, are deployed throughout facilities to improve the visitor experience. Bluetooth PoI information solutions can not only determine how far away another device may be but also in what direction.

Many museums now support smartphone apps that provide visitors with additional information about nearby exhibits. The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Australia and the Van Gough Museum in Amsterdam are two such case studies that are already using Bluetooth enabled beacons to create a better visitor experience.

With the addition of the new direction finding capability, Bluetooth proximity solutions have the potential to deliver even greater performance. Museums, for example, often have rooms that support multiple exhibits with associated beacons. With direction finding support, a PoI information application on a smartphone could not only inform a user of all the exhibits in the room and allow them to select one to receive additional information, but the user could simply point their smartphone at a specific exhibit to get more information on that item.

Get Closer with Blue

Bluetooth® enabled solutions will now be able to get you closer to the items you’re looking for. Current item finding solutions, such as Tile trackers, leverage small, battery-powered Bluetooth devices, often referred to as personal property tags, that can be attached to movable objects like a set of keys or a wallet. These solutions help consumers locate misplaced items. So long as the item is connected to a Bluetooth tag, an app on their smartphone will let them know if the item is nearby and approximately how close.

Thanks to new Bluetooth Direction Finding capabilities, item finding solutions could be enhanced to provide directional information. With direction finding support, in addition to identifying how close a misplaced item is, an item finding application on a smartphone could also determine the item’s direction, improving the user experience.

Download this paper, Enhancing Bluetooth Location Services with Direction Finding, to learn how the new direction finding feature will enhance other Bluetooth® Location Services.

FEATURED DOWNLOAD

Enhancing Bluetooth Location Services with Direction Finding

A new Bluetooth Direction Finding feature allows 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.

INSTANT DOWNLOAD

Qualcomm Highlights Past Bluetooth® Successes and Shares Insight Into What’s Ahead for Bluetooth Technology in 2025

An innovator of intelligent computing, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. strives to develop comprehensive solutions that…

Unlock Accurate Ranging With Our Bluetooth® Wireless MCUs for Channel Sounding

See how our family of devices enable improved ranging technology for Channel Sounding, introduced…

Robust Indoor Distance Estimation Algorithms for Bluetooth® Channel Sounding

Bluetooth Channel Sounding is a powerful feature setting a clear and solid foundation for…

What’s New with Bluetooth® Technology: Channel Sounding, Upcoming Features, and Key Technology Trends

With over 5 billion devices shipping each year, Bluetooth technology is the most widely…

Bluetooth® Core 6.0: What's New In The Latest Bluetooth Release?

Bluetooth technology is constantly growing, not only enhancing existing applications but also enabling entirely…

Taking Find My Applications to the Next Level with Telink

Discover how Telink’s solutions enhance Find My applications with cross-platform compatibility and Bluetooth Channel…

Bluetooth Channel Sounding Release and Lambda:4 Demo at Bluetooth SIG Event in Bellevue September 2024

To celebrate the release of the Bluetooth Core Specification 6.0 including the Channel Sounding…

Bluetooth Channel Sounding Brings Crucial Ranging to New Bluetooth Devices

The Bluetooth SIG has relentlessly pushed forward the capabilities and feature sets of the…

Bluetooth® Channel Sounding: A Technical Overview

This paper provides a detailed technical overview of Bluetooth® Channel Sounding, a secure fine ranging…

Security & Scalability: Navigating the Bluetooth LE Landscape for Retail

Bluetooth LE is a game-changer for the retail industry, enabling new levels of connectivity,…

2024 Bluetooth® Market Update

The 2024 Bluetooth® Market Update examines the direction and adoption of Bluetooth technology.

Using Bluetooth in Location Tracking Devices

Bluetooth ranging technology, which uses the distance between one or more devices through signal…

2023 Bluetooth® Market Update

Featuring new market insights and industry forecasts from ABI Research and other analyst firms...

EJOT | INDUTRAX Case Study

EJOT, headquartered in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany, is a group of medium-sized companies with production…

Galleria Borghese, Rome Case Study

The Galleria Borghese Museum, based in Rome, houses works by Caravaggio, Raphael, Titian, Correggio,…

No More Queueing At The Hotel Check-in

Over two thirds of the British population now own a smartphone, using it for…

Bluetooth Location Services

See 8 use cases for enhancing building efficiencies and creating a better visitor experience, discover new data that supports the latest trends and forecasts, and find out what’s driving the rapid adoption of location services solutions.

Designing and Developing Bluetooth® Internet Gateways

Learn about Bluetooth® internet gateways, how to make them secure and scalable, and design and implement your own...

Lighting as a Platform

See how connected lighting systems are being used as a platform to enable advanced building services like wayfinding, asset tracking, and space utilization to improve the ROI of smart building investments.

Build a Smarter Building with Blue

See how Bluetooth increases reliability, reduces costs, and enhances your smart building ROI.

An Introduction to Bluetooth Beacons

Learn how to build your own Bluetooth beacon or integrate beacon technology into your existing products and apps.

 Get Help