Bluetooth 2016 Roadmap Brings Fourfold Range Increase and Mesh Networking (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has announced its roadmap for Bluetooth Smart in 2016, promising a fourfold range increase in the low-energy, IoT-oriented version of the protocol, along with dedicated mesh networking, a 100% increase in speed and no extra consumption of energy. The last set of upgrades to the protocol offered direct access to the internet and security enhancements. Since Bluetooth must currently contend with attacks on everything from cars to toilets, the increased range means that developers may not be able to rely on 'fleeting contact' as a security feature quite as much.

Comments

please fix audio latency

[Anonymous Coward]

it's 2015. k thx bye.

Re:4x range , 2x the speed & no power use incr

[monkeyxpress]

Call me skeptical but I'd love to know how they've managed that short of a major breakthrough in RF transmitter or DSP technology.

Bluetooth LE uses a rather basic GFSK radio interface. If they moved to a more spectrally efficient modulation scheme (such as the one regular BT uses) they can improve things significantly. They have also increased the packet size, which will improve the ratio of data to overhead when you are sending larger amounts of data (which is probably not most IoT applications).

Re:4x range , 2x the speed & no power use incr

[serviscope_minor]

Bluetooth LE uses a rather basic GFSK radio interface. If they moved to a more spectrally efficient modulation scheme (such as the one regular BT uses) they can improve things significantly.

Yeah but the more spectrally efficient ones like QAM are less power efficient. FSK is about the best thing you can do with low power if you don't mind being greedy with the spectrum. And BTLE is a low energy protocol, so it makes sense to prioritise energy use.