The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), which manages the Bluetooth standard, has announced Bluetooth 6.0. This new version comes after Bluetooth 5.0, which was released in 2016. After several years, Bluetooth 6.0 introduces important improvements, especially in accurate device tracking and enhanced security.
Bluetooth 6.0 has ‘ultra’ accurate distance measurement
The biggest feature of Bluetooth 6.0 is Channel Sounding, which is a new ranging feature that enables true-distance awareness to supported devices. The group highlighted that this method can measure the distance between two devices down to centimeter-level accuracy.
It is set to enhance tracking in a wide range of products, including those that support Find My such as Apple’s AirPods and Google’s wearables. And more than the distance, it can also detect the presence and find the direction of another Bluetooth-enabled device with pinpoint accuracy.
Additionally, Channel Sounding comes with new multi-level security to improve safeguards against attacks that take advantage of close or nearby wireless ranging. This will also be useful in boosting security on other fronts, like in digital keys for smart homes.
Smarter Bluetooth scanning
Bluetooth 6.0 also adds more intelligent scanning. The new generation utilizes Bluetooth LE Extended Advertising which is based on decision-based advertising filtering. This makes pairing faster, more reliable, and more efficient. The host hardware can tell if it needs to continue scanning for other Bluetooth devices nearby or if it should stop if it detects that there is no hardware in range.
There is also a welcome upgrade to latency and how data is transferred with Bluetooth 6.0 through the new Isochronous Adaptation Layer (ISOAL). It should benefit devices like headphones and smartwatches, as more data can be sent or received in smaller packets.
It’s unclear when we will see the wireless standard becoming available. There are also no devices announced so far that support Bluetooth 6.0. Perhaps we will be seeing the first batch of products with the new Bluetooth standard by next year.
Which changes and enhancements on Bluetooth 6.0 do you think are the most important? We want to hear your answers in the comments.
