Direct networking, Bluetooth 4.2 to the smart home on the show

December 14, Bluetooth Technology Alliance (SIG) in the global release of Bluetooth 4.2 standard. In the afternoon of yesterday (January 21), SIG held a media communication meeting in Beijing to launch the technology to China.

Compared to Bluetooth 4.0, 4.1, Bluetooth 4.2, although only a small version of the forward one, but its update content is quite a lot. It focuses on three aspects: security, speed, networking.

When Bluetooth 4.0 was released, Beacon positioning technology began to prevail, but it was followed by an outbreak of user privacy issues. Lei Feng has reported that New York, an advertising company, Titan a beacon network of unknown use in the city, which can be used to track user information. After Bluetooth 4.2, users will be able to set their own privacy level to avoid such tracking.

Rate, Bluetooth 4.2 achieves a better transmission efficiency ratio by increasing the capacity of the packet. Official data is 2.5 times times faster than the rate of transmission.

Networking is to say that Bluetooth 4.2 is starting to support network connectivity using Ipv6/6lowpan technology. 6LoWPAN is a small Ethernet-like network standard that is slower to transfer and is often used in industrial or traditional home control devices. With networking capabilities, the future of real-time sensor networks based on Bluetooth gateways will also come faster.

Overall, security, rate updates are just routine upgrades, and networking capacity support is a surprise. Corrid, senior marketing director of SIG, said in a sermon that support for networking is mainly from the needs of some downstream developers, we hope to be able to better use Bluetooth in the IoT field. He also revealed that the current Bluetooth technology only supports a pair of more than one or one of the connection, and the alliance will soon support a many-to-many approach, that is, Bluetooth mesh technology standards.

In the sermon, Corrid also shared the SIG's judgment on the future growth of Bluetooth technology. He said that between 2013 and 2018, the largest market growth space for Bluetooth smart (Bluetooth 4.0+) was in the smart home sector, with an annual compound growth rate exceeding 232% per cent of consumer electronics. The second is consumer electronics, beacons and retailing, health care and fitness. And in the scene, there are companies based on Bluetooth technology smart home products, such as light bulbs, water cups, remote control and so on.

Networking, multiple mesh support, in fact, is also responding to market demand, these two features for Bluetooth to enter the smart home is very important. Over the years, smart home devices have mostly been connected by ZigBee technology, because they have an advantage over the vast array of devices online. Multi-mesh technology allows Bluetooth in the networking capacity of a huge increase, and thus the ability to replace ZigBee.

However, these items have not yet landed on the product, so ZigBee has a time window to fight back.

(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)