As Bluetooth® High Data Throughput Emerges, What Are the Opportunities for the Technology?

Bluetooth® technology continues to evolve, with the next major milestone being the arrival of High Data Throughput (HDT), expected later this year as a key feature part of the next Bluetooth® Core specification. HDT will bring numerous benefits, most notably, increasing peak throughput to 7.5 Megabits per Second (Mbps), resulting in a nearly 4X increase in speed. This will bring significant enhancements across a wide range of wireless applications, including data transfer, wireless audio, and human-interface devices, among others. To date, most vendors have focused on the enhanced audio capabilities that HDT technology can enable, offering the potential to support much higher bit rates and lossless multi-channel audio. While Low Energy (LE) Audio provides a high-quality experience via the LC3 codec over 2 Mbps, HDT paves the way for the next-generation of LE Audio and the opportunity to target premium lossless audio experiences, gaming applications, multi-channel home audio, and new audio experiences.

Several chipset and Intellectual Property (IP) vendors have already released HDT capable solutions, or their own proprietary implementations of HDT, targeting unique use cases. Earlier this year at Mobile World Congress (MWC), Qualcomm announced that its multi-protocol FastConnect 8800 Wi-Fi 8 mobile connectivity system would support Bluetooth® HDT based on a working draft of the specification. MediaTek’s Filogic 380 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth® combo chipset also supports HDT. In August, CEVA and Actions Technology announced the Actions Technology ATS296X-series of Bluetooth® audio chips, powered by the Ceva-Waves™ Bluetooth® HDT platform. Realtek has also developed its RTL8773J, an audio System-on-Chip (SoC) designed for True Wireless Stereo (TWS), gaming headsets, speakers, and other Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled devices, that will support HDT.

While most of these initial announcements and solutions are audio-centric, HDT brings obvious benefits for a number of additional applications. Higher throughput can equal much faster data transfer speeds, bringing significant reductions in file transfer applications, data offload from sensors, firmware updates, and information sharing between wearables and Extended Reality (XR) devices and smartphones. This can help enable enhanced user experiences for emerging product categories such as smart glasses, and enable the transfer of higher resolution sensor data for fitness and healthcare wearables, machine telemetry, appliance diagnostics, and other applications. In addition, in dense Internet of Things (IoT) sensor deployment scenarios, faster data transfer can help reduce airtime and, thus, overall network congestion. There is also the opportunity to support multiple, high-bandwidth data streams without the need for multi-core radios, opening up innovative new use cases for Bluetooth®. There is also the potential to optimize energy consumption thanks to spending longer time in idle modes, while additional features such as forward error correction can help reduce retransmissions and boost reliability. In another boost to reliability, HDT supports multiple different bitrates, including 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7.5 Mbps. If the signal degrades, the device can drop to a lower rate to ensure a more reliable link rather than dropping the connection.

As with any new Bluetooth® release, there will be challenges to adoption, and HDT has its own unique complexities when it comes to deployment and the competitive landscape.

• Specification Availability: While draft specs have been released, the final HDT specs are expected to release by the end of this year as a key part of the next Bluetooth® Core specification. While IP vendors and some silicon vendors have announced compatible products, many leading vendors have not yet unveiled their product portfolios supporting HDT.
• Hardware Upgrade Required: HDT is a significant upgrade to Bluetooth® technology that will require developing new hardware. In contrast to other releases, this is not a feature that can be introduced via a firmware update. As with any new technology rollout, there is a delay from Integrated Circuit (IC) development to product development and deployment.
• Platform and Device Support: HDT requires support at both the platform and device levels. An HDT device paired with a non-HDT smartphone will not be able to take advantage of the higher throughput and will fall back to existing LE capabilities. This will also require support at both the hardware and Operating System (OS) levels, which has been a challenge with some previous rollouts.
• Additional Component Costs: HDT is also not a free upgrade. HDT products will likely be at a premium when compared to existing Bluetooth® LE solutions, which could inhibit wider adoption in the shorter term.
• Real World Performance Limitations: In congested or difficult Radio Frequency (RF) environments, HDT may not always be able to achieve the highest 7.5 Mbps configuration and could fall back to an HDT mode of 2 Mbps. In addition, higher configurations bring range trade-offs, which could also limit the user experience for certain applications.
• Opportunities Beyond Audio: Most vendors are promoting the enhanced audio capabilities that could be enabled by HDT. However, beyond this application, it is not yet clear what the most compelling applications will be for HDT, nor whether there is a strong enough incentive for immediate adoption given the additional cost. This could limit investment beyond the audio ecosystem.
• Lossless Audio Support Not Included: HDT does not currently define a new lossless audio codec, and while the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) is actively working on enhancing Bluetooth® LE Audio to meet the growing demand for high-resolution and lossless audio, HDT audio solutions could be limited to vendors with existing lossless or high-resolution audio codecs.
• Strong and Growing Competition: The audio landscape is becoming increasingly competitive. Proprietary wireless, low-power Wi-Fi audio, Ultra-Wideband (UWB) audio, and even improvements enabled by LE Audio or existing dual-mode solutions could limit initial incentives to adopt HDT for audio applications. In addition, beyond audio applications, ultra-low power Wi-Fi that can offer significantly higher throughput, as well as emerging UWB data transfer applications, could also eat into future opportunities for HDT beyond audio.