Zhang Shuqian of Onrui Micro: In the era of wireless connection, the Bluetooth low energy market continues to grow

According to Jiwei.com, as a star in wireless connection technology, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is widely used in wireless connections between mobile IoT devices; at the same time, as the most widely used low-power communication protocol, its market demand is continuing to explode.

Today, the world is entering an era of the Internet of Things (IoT) where various systems need to collect and exchange data. In the IoT, where sensors are wirelessly connected to form a network and enable data exchange between devices, BLE plays a vital role.

At present, WiFi, Bluetooth, and WWAN are the mainstays of the Internet of Things, accounting for more than 95% of all applications. The market prospects for IoT chip products are broad, and the market size is expected to exceed US$10 billion in 2022. By 2022, there will be 50 billion IoT devices in the world, one-third of which will be equipped with Bluetooth chips. The Bluetooth communication standard has penetrated into many application fields such as consumer electronics, automotive electronics, and industry.

Technical indicators and evolution

According to the definition of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), BLE is a standard wireless communication protocol with low power consumption, short distance and low data rate, which operates in the 2.4GHz ISM band. The latest Bluetooth standard is BT5.2.

Zhang Shuqian, marketing director of Onrui Micro, said: The current technical indicators of BLE chips mainly focus on the chip's maximum transmission power, receiver sensitivity, internal resources, compatibility, stability and chip power consumption.

Zhang Shuqian, Marketing Director of Onrui Micro

First, the link budget of the BLE product determines the distance of the signal connection. The connection distance is mainly related to the maximum transmission power of the chip transmitter and the sensitivity of the receiver, as well as the product application environment and the chip's anti-interference ability.

Second, in terms of power consumption, most BLE products are battery-powered products used in the Internet of Things, which have relatively high requirements for product life, such as ESL, wearable bracelets/watches, voice remote controls, etc.

Third, the operating capability is related to the MCU operating speed and storage resources (SRAM, Flash, etc.) of the product itself. Some products, such as wearable watches, have relatively high requirements on the MCU operating speed, SRAM and Flash resource size, and various sensor and screen interfaces.

Fourthly, the compatibility and stability of the BLE chip determine the robustness of the product. BLE products need to be officially certified by SIG, and they also need to be tested for compatibility between BLE products, especially between various platform mobile phones and BLE devices. The product itself must also be stable enough without freezing, disconnection, etc.

Regarding the Bluetooth Mesh protocol, Zhang Shuqian said in an interview with Jiwei.com: The development of the Bluetooth Mesh protocol has greatly enhanced the networking capabilities of Bluetooth products and expanded the application scenarios of Bluetooth products, enabling Bluetooth products to move from independent individual performance to network collaborative capabilities.

It is understood that the Bluetooth Mesh protocol was released by the SIG Bluetooth Technology Alliance in 2017 and has a many-to-many network topology. The core technologies of the Bluetooth Mesh network include mandatory security, optimized low power consumption, and strong scalability. It is now directly compatible with various Bluetooth smart devices.

Currently, the Bluetooth Mesh standard is rapidly being applied in the fields of smart lighting, smart sockets, smart fans, sensors, etc. Among them, the smart lighting system is the scenario where the Bluetooth Mesh protocol is most likely to be implemented and exploded.

Back in May 2020, the Bluetooth SIG and DiiA (Digital Lighting Interface Alliance) announced a collaboration to develop the Bluetooth-DALI specification, with the goal of specifying a standard interface for configuring, monitoring and controlling D4i smart lamps on a Bluetooth mesh lighting control network.

Bluetooth acts as a data pipeline in smart lighting systems. Through Bluetooth, a digital smart lighting network can be built: collecting sensor data (detecting air quality, temperature and humidity, carbon dioxide concentration, noise), indoor positioning functions, and monitoring the operating status of lighting equipment (equipment information, equipment failures, equipment energy consumption, etc.), which can be used to manage lighting systems, optimize energy consumption, and predictive maintenance.

Bluetooth technology therefore plays an important role in data-driven smart building services. The added value of smart lighting services is seven to ten times greater than the value of lighting control and energy savings alone. Space utilization applications can visualize the collected building usage data. Lighting maintenance applications can monitor the working status of each lamp, observe anomalies, and trigger maintenance measures before the problem lamp fails. Energy reporting applications can send data to utilities to help improve energy balance. These applications bring endless possibilities.

At the same time, Zhang Shuqian also mentioned in his report the important updates of the Bluetooth 5.1 standard, namely the Bluetooth direction-finding function based on AoA/AoD; the traditional Bluetooth location service based on RSSI has a positioning accuracy of 1 to 10 meters. The Bluetooth location service based on antenna array and AoA/AoD technology can theoretically achieve centimeter-level positioning accuracy.

BLE Audio Success

It is understood that in January 2020, SIG officially released the BT5.2 standard, adding the LE Audio function, mainly adding LE synchronization channel, LE audio framework protocol (GAF), LC3 audio codec, and LE audio-related Profiles.

As we all know, before BT5.2, Bluetooth audio transmission used the classic Bluetooth A2DP mode for point-to-point data transmission. Now the emergence of low-power audio LE Audio has broken the monopoly of classic Bluetooth in the audio market.

Therefore, at the 2020 CES, SIG officially announced that the new BT5.2 standard supports connection-based one-master-multiple-slave audio stream applications, such as TWS headphones, multi-room audio synchronization, and transmission based on broadcast data streams, which can be widely used in airport lounges, stadiums, conference halls, cinemas and other places with public screen audio reception. It can be said that the emergence of Bluetooth 5.2 has not only broken the Apple tws patent, but also provided support for multi-channel synchronous audio transmission.

It is reported that LC3 was developed by Fraunhofer IIS of Germany and adopted by SIG as the high-definition audio codec for LE. Compared with the traditional Bluetooth audio codec based on SBC, LC3 brings users a clearer and more reliable audio experience.

Zhang Shuqian emphasized that LC3 is a mandatory codec for LE audio. Under the same listening experience, the data volume of high-quality audio sources after LC3 compression is about half of that of SBC.

The industrial chain of BLE chips is gradually improving

In general, the future development trend of BLE chips is to evolve towards lower power consumption, more stable connection, and higher cost performance.

Undoubtedly, low power consumption is an eternal topic for Bluetooth chips. From a technical perspective, when it is difficult to achieve breakthroughs in battery technology, the subthreshold technology of chips and the technology based on air energy collection can be said to be an innovation and breakthrough direction for Bluetooth low power consumption technology.

According to Gartner's 2018 market report, the CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of BLE applications in the IoT and automotive markets will reach 17% from 2017 to 2021. By 2023, BLE device shipments will exceed 1.6 billion, with annual shipments increasing threefold; 90% of Bluetooth devices will use low-power Bluetooth technology; annual shipments of Bluetooth mesh network devices will reach 360 million, with a compound annual growth rate of 23%; annual shipments of Bluetooth location service devices will reach 431 million, with a compound annual growth rate of 43%.

Under the huge market demand, the gradual improvement of the industrial chain has also been accelerated. At present, the main foreign BLE chip manufacturers include: Nordic, Dialog, Ambiq, TI, Silicon labs, Qualcomm (CSR), Cypress, STMicroelectronics (ST), Toshiba Toshiba. Among them, Nordic occupies about 40% of the entire BLE market.

Realtek and ISSC from Taiwan, as well as companies such as Onray Micro, Tailing Micro, Beken, Goodix Technology, Yizhaowei, Zhuoshengwei, Fu Ruikun, Fengjia Micro, and Lianrui Micro from mainland China also have a place in the BLE market.

With the strong support of the national and local governments, the Internet of Things industry has entered a period of rapid development. Bluetooth low energy technology is at the core of the Internet of Things technology and is in the midst of a wave of domestic chip substitution. After years of development, domestic RF SoC chip manufacturers have also accumulated certain technologies. It can be said that Bluetooth low energy technology has ushered in an unprecedented historical development opportunity.

BLE technology ignites the smart wearable device market

Currently, with the advent of 5G and the Internet of Things, smart homes and smart wearable devices are in a stage of rapid development, leading a new wave of consumer electronics explosion. Among them, the market of smart bracelets/watches is an important market for the explosion of BLE technology.

According to IDC data, the shipment of wearable devices in 2019 reached 336.5 million units, a huge increase of 89.0% from 178 million units in 2018. Among them, the shipment of smart watches in 2019 reached 92.4 million units, an increase of 22.7% from 75.3 million units in 2018.