Bluetooth Low Energy

Bluetooth® Low Energy provides low-cost, interoperable wireless connectivity to compact battery-operated applications. It is a wireless protocol operating in the 2.4 GHz ISM band, with up to 1.4 Mbps application throughput or up to 1,000 m range. The technology is highly effective, minimizing the energy needed to transfer data. It is secure, specifying features to ensure confidentiality, integrity and privacy.

Bluetooth LE is now standardized in all smart phones, tablets and laptops, in addition wide range of other devices. It has support in iOS and Android, as well as macOS, Windows 10 and Linux.

Bluetooth 5 is the most important improvement of the Bluetooth standard since the introduction of Bluetooth LE in Bluetooth 4.0. The new features significantly enhance all applications, and spawn applications that just weren't feasible before. The nRF52 Series SoCs are all Bluetooth 5.

The 2 Mbps mode increases application throughput, up to 1.4 Mbps, enabling streaming and high bandwidth applications. Compared to the 1 Mbps mode, it is much more energy effective, halving the amount of energy per bit, facilitating applications to last longer on the same size battery, or have a smaller and cheaper battery.

Advertising Extensions revolutionizes the broadcasting capabilities of Bluetooth LE devices. Up to 8 times more advertising data can be included in an advertisement. Long Range connection establishment can be done directly. Advertisements can be chained together to broadcast larger advertising data sets.

Channel Selection Algorithm #2 (CSA #2) improves coexistence performance and robustness.
The Long Range mode allows Bluetooth LE devices to communicate further apart and enables complete smart home coverage.
Read more about Bluetooth Low Energy - Bluetooth 5

Bluetooth 5.1 introduced a major new feature for Bluetooth Low Energy; Direction Finding. This feature offers exciting new possibilities for accurate indoor positioning of assets and people in three-dimensional space. Read more about Bluetooth 5.1 Direction Finding.

Bluetooth mesh is a state-of-the-art standard that extends the capabilities of Bluetooth to include large-scale networks, supported by the nRF52 Series. Leverage our qualified Bluetooth mesh stack and open source provisioning smart phone apps in your development. Our SoftDevices offers concurrent GATT operation with the Bluetooth mesh stack, providing a phone connectivity option.

Read more about our Bluetooth mesh here.

The multiprotocol radios in the nRF52 Series SoCs are flexible enough to dynamically switch between protocols, providing concurrent operation. The most common use case is that you want to leverage the interoperability of Bluetooth LE in a mesh topology, it being Bluetooth mesh, Thread, Zigbee or 2.4 GHz proprietary protocols. We provide the hardware and software that makes it possible.

Read more about multiprotocol here.