Eight Views of Bluetooth World

Mesh due in July, disposables on a far horizon

Rick Merritt, EETimes
3/30/2017 10:25 AM EDT

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The next big thing in Bluetooth — the mesh networking standard — was not quite ready for Bluetooth World. So the annual event here focused on showcasing startups, the frontiers of new use cases, and software extensions.

Bluetooth Mesh, in the works for two years, is in final interoperability testing with a standard release expected in July. How many nodes and hops it will support with what throughput and latency is under wraps until then.

In December, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group officially rolled out its 5.0 standard. It includes a modular set of optional extensions for throughput up to 2 Mbits/s, range to an estimated 120 m at lower data rates, and support for about 256 bytes in beacon messages to broadcast a URL rather than a unique identifier pointing to one.

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