For years, Bluetooth® technology has been used to support a wide range of location-based services, from proximity solutions like point of interest (PoI) information and item finding to positioning systems that support real-time locating systems (RTLS) and indoor positioning systems (IPS).

In the world of Bluetooth connected devices, the Find Me profile helps people find lost objects with special Bluetooth tags attached, and the Proximity Profile helps people keep important items nearby and find them if they move too far away. But it’s Bluetooth beacons that tend to steal the headlines.

The Bluetooth beacon is a phenomenally successful application of Bluetooth technology and is found in all sorts of situations, providing positioning and proximity services in airports, art galleries, train stations, stadiums, retail stores, and more.

The Need for Accurate Location and Direction Finding

There are many use cases that either require more accurate positioning data than today’s beacons can offer, require the determination of the direction an object is in, or have both these requirements. For years, beacons have served us well, but they cannot meet these higher-end requirements.

High-Accuracy Indoor Positioning

There’s an obvious benefit to being able to more accurately determine the position of a person within a complex indoor environment, such as an airport. More dependable and user-friendly indoor navigation systems and more precisely targeted proximity solutions can be created.

High-Accuracy Asset Tracking

There are many scenarios that could be regarded as asset tracking scenarios, from keeping track of corporate assets in an office environment to monitoring the progress of product components as they pass through the various stages of a manufacturing process. Tracking use cases like these tend to need accurate positioning capabilities.

Continuous Direction Finding

There are devices on the market today that use Bluetooth to help find lost objects. Smartphone applications use signal strength to estimate the distance from the lost object. But with no directional information available, using one of these devices to find something lost involves a degree of experimentation. This might include walking in various directions and observing the effect it has on the estimated distance from the lost object.

A direction finding capability where the direction to a lost object is continually updated would allow solutions to be created that guide the user directly towards the lost item, with no experimentation required.

Directional Discovery

With directional discovery, if an art gallery has direction finding tags attached to its paintings, visitors can simply point their phone at a painting they’re interested in, and the app on their phone filters out the signals from all the other paintings in the room, selecting the painting in the direction they’re pointing and providing information about that painting.

Directional discovery goes a step further, allowing you to find an object in a given direction with a particular capability. Requests such as find a printer over there become easily dealt with if direction finding tags are in use.

High-Accuracy Direction Finding with Bluetooth

The latest version of the Bluetooth® Core Specification introduces new capabilities that support high-accuracy direction finding. The controller specification has been enhanced so that specialized hardware that incorporates an antenna array can be used to support the calculation of the direction of a received radio signal. The Host Controller Interface (HCI) has also been modified so that data acquired by the controller can be made available to higher layers of the stack where direction calculations can take place.

With Bluetooth direction finding, proximity and positioning systems operating at sub-meter accuracy levels can now be created for use cases, such as indoor positioning, wayfinding, asset tracking, object finding, and directional discovery.

Bluetooth direction finding leverages proven engineering techniques for determining signal direction and standardizes the interfaces, interactions, and important internal operations involved. Accurate direction finding is now interoperable across manufacturers and will be widely adopted to create a new generation of advanced Bluetooth location services.

For a technical breakdown of the new direction finding capabilities, download Bluetooth® Direction Finding: A Technical Overview.

FEATURED DOWNLOAD

Bluetooth Direction Finding: A Technical Overview

Get a technical look at the new Bluetooth direction finding feature and see how it can enable location services solutions that support centimeter-level accuracy.

INSTANT DOWNLOAD

The Auracast Experience Japan - Member Companies Expect to See Bluetooth Technology Leading Japan's Audio Market

Recently the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), in collaboration with several member companies, including…

Bluetooth Channel Sounding - A Step Towards 10-cm Ranging Accuracy for Secure Access, Digital Key, and Proximity Services

Through Channel Sounding, the distance between two Bluetooth Low Energy devices can be estimated more accurately than with existing techniques, down to 10cm accuracy.

Top 5 Auracast Assistive Listening System Resources Released in 2023

This year, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) and members of the Bluetooth community…

A New Bluetooth Standard Improves Personal Health Device Interoperability for Better Remote Patient Monitoring

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) recently published a set of specifications that standardizes…

Smart Lighting Control Brightens the Future of Bluetooth Illumination

Smart lighting is a key component of smart commercial buildings and the connected home.…

The Auracast™ Experience Makes a Big Impact in Shanghai and Tokyo

Share your audio, unmute your world, and hear your best — all of this…

New Audio Experiences Showcased in Shanghai at Tech G

Recently, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) hosted The Auracast™ Experience at Tech-G in…

Synthesize and Transmit Audio Using LE Audio

The application is assembled as a sound-generating device, the synthesizer, and a receiving headphone.…

Accessing the IoT Ecosystem

IoT has been an emerging technology for many years. It first appeared on the…

Walkthrough Bluetooth Mesh 1.1 and Bluetooth® Networked Lighting Control (NLC)

If you are interested in the new features introduced in the Bluetooth® Mesh or…

The 2023 State of Sound Report: A global analysis of audio consumer behaviors and desires

The State of Sound report compiles key findings from extensive audio research with consumers…

Six Bluetooth Mesh Feature Enhancements to Get Excited About

The new Bluetooth mesh feature enhancements offer more robust security, improved network efficiency, reduced…

Bluetooth® Mesh Feature Enhancements Summary

This paper summarizes the recent Bluetooth® Mesh feature enhancements and provides references to other…

Bluetooth SIG Completes Full-Stack Standard for Networked Lighting Control

Standard Will Enable Lighting Control Market to Reach True Potential Kirkland, Washington – September…

Everything You Need to Know About Bluetooth 5.4

Bluetooth 5.4 introduces support for bi-directional, large-scale, one-to-many networking, driven by wireless standardization needs…

The Latest in HADM with Bluetooth LE

HADM, or high accuracy distance measurement using Bluetooth does exactly what it says –…

How the Bluetooth® Electronic Shelf Label Standard Will Impact the Smart Retail Market

ABI Research explores how the recent arrival of the new Bluetooth® Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) standard will help create an interoperable ESL ecosystem that can address many of the challenges being faced by retail and other environments.

Retail Pharmacy

A leading retailer is collaborating with Wiliot, an ambient Internet of Things (IoT) pioneer,…

2023 Bluetooth® Market Update

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

Using IoT Sensor Technology to Produce Stronger, Healthier Colonies and Improve Pollination Outcomes

Honeybees are excellent pollinators and a critical part of food production. In fact, 75%…

Bluetooth SIG Introduces Wireless Standard for Electronic Shelf Label Market

Industry Leaders Clear the Way for Global ESL Market to Reach Full Potential Kirkland,…

Bluetooth SIG Adds Alain Michaud from Google's Platforms & Ecosystems Team to Board of Directors

Kirkland, Washington – January 18, 2023 – The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), the trade association…

LE Audio: The Future of Bluetooth® Audio

ABI Research outlines how the arrival of LE Audio is set to transform the Bluetooth audio ecosystem and the impact it will have on Bluetooth® audio market forecasts.

Bluetooth audio’s biggest upgrade in years is coming soon to headphones

We’re on the cusp of a new generation of wireless headphones that are more…

Bluetooth SIG Announces Auracast™ Broadcast Audio, Allowing Unlimited Audio Sharing to Earbuds, Speakers or Hearing Devices

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), the trade association that oversees Bluetooth® technology, today…

Auracast is coming to Bluetooth, boosting movement, inclusion, and participation for hearing device users

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), the standards mover and shaker for the short-range…

The Bluetooth® Low Energy Primer

Are you new to Bluetooth Low Energy? Learn about its constituent parts, features, and how it works.

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.

Introducing Bluetooth® LE Audio

Now available for free digital download, get your copy of this in-depth, technical overview of the LE Audio specifications.

Bluetooth® Technology for Linux Developers

Learn how to use the interprocess communication system D-Bus and the BlueZ APIs to create Bluetooth applications for Linux computers.

Designing and Developing Bluetooth® Internet Gateways

Learn about Bluetooth internet gateways, how to make them secure and scalable, and design and implement your own working prototype gateway and web application for use with either Bluetooth LE Peripherals or with Bluetooth mesh networks.

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.

 Get Help