Prospects for Bluetooth Low Energy-based Audio Raised

Nordic Semiconductor has announced Bluetooth 5-ready software, enabling next-generation applications based on the latest Bluetooth 5 standard. This software product is available for Nordic's latest nRF52840 and nRF52832 System-on-Chip (SoCs).

Bluetooth 5 is the core specification for the latest version of Bluetooth wireless technology, recently officially adopted by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG). This software offers improved operating range, data throughput, and broadcasting performance options for Bluetooth low energy markets such as smart homes, payment wearables, and IoT sensor networks. It also allows for more devices and nodes to be connected compared to Bluetooth 4.2, and halves firmware update times.


▲ Nordic nRF52 Bluetooth 5

Nordic Semiconductor's Bluetooth 5 developer solution for the nRF52840 SoC includes the S140 v5.0-alpha protocol stack, enabling developers to immediately implement Bluetooth 5's long-range and high-throughput modes on the nRF52840 SoC.

Additionally, the nRF5 SDK v13.0-alph provides application examples that enable long-range and high-throughput capabilities. In addition, the Bluetooth 5 protocol stack, S132 v5.0-alpha, has been supplemented to enable development of a high throughput mode of 2 Mbps and the capacity to handle up to 20 simultaneous links on the existing nRF52832 SoC.

“Bluetooth 5’s long-range mode supports two new data rates of 500Kbps and 125Kbps, which, with radio-specific coding, can significantly increase operating range by up to four times,” says John Leonard, Product Marketing Manager at Nordic Semiconductor. “Using the increased maximum output power of Nordic’s nRF52840, a total link budget of around 111dBm can be achieved.”