Problem Statement

Bluetooth has been undeniably successful, featuring on the majority of smart phones, personal computers, smart speakers, smart watches and many more. There are however a number of use cases it cannot currently support, due to restrictions in data rates, latency, support for multi-channel audio or indeed the one-to-one nature of Bluetooth connections.

This report explores the requirements currently not satisfied by Bluetooth, as well as some of the acceptable trade-offs which could be made.

Solution

Having built upon previous year’s work, that looked at available solutions and determined whether it did what they needed, the 2019 Bluetooth+ group has expanded the valuable audio use-cases for a RAN (Room Area Network) and developed the key features to meet these user needs. These features form the base of a new requirements document to replace Bluetooth for the consumer and professional audio market.

The five most valuable use-cases have been identified. These were determined based on approximate market size or relevance to the wider industry.

• Personal music playback (to headphones and wireless speakers)
• Network based communications (such as those using a host to connect to the internet - like a phone making a FaceTime call)
• Gaming (and explicitly looking beyond the casual gamer)
• Audio associated with video
• Pro Audio (for studio and live performance)

Taking input from the wider workshop group, other use-cases were identified including:

• Enhanced audio for event attendees (such as within a crowd at a concert)
• Local group communication (direct endpoint-to-endpoint)
• Personal audio for exhibits (such as tour guide audio or interactive audio)
• PSA (Public Service Announcements)

The following table is an extension of the previously reported capabilities of different wireless protocols. In this report the Bluetooth+ group has appended additional critical use-cases identified during the brainstorming session and assessed each of the previously recommended protocols against the complete list of capabilities.

A complete table of the needs of the key use-cases can be found in the Usecases section.

The finding from the workgroup is that none of the existing wireless protocols are fully fit for the future needs of our primary use-cases. WiFi was most able to meet our identified needs however it is critically unable to meet the low power, low cost and low latency requirements.

This workgroup formed on the basis of assumed shortcomings of the existing Bluetooth specification. The conclusion of the brainstorming found that Bluetooth really does have many gaps to the needs of audio products thus reaffirming the need of new wireless standard for system level connectivity and interoperability.

In addition to the low power, low cost and low latency (2ms) requirements, the workgroup would particularly like to highlight the requirements to provide broadcast capabilities (one-to-many) and to enable direct endpoint-to-endpoint communication.

Usecases

The following matrix shows a list of feature requirements by usecase. Usecases on the left of the bold line are those which should be considered high-priority to resolve.

Considerations for Tradeoffs

There are a number of features which may not be required for every use case, which additionally may not be possible to implement together. For example, low latency may be a limiting factor when combined with other requirements.

With this in mind, it is recommended that Bluetooth+ considers Profiles which provide the correct combinations of features to satisfy the target use-cases.

Next Step

We urge the collective brain of BBQ to use their influence in the industry to provide this analysis to the appropriate parties.

Other reference material

Group Report: The Need for a New Wireless Audio Network Standard, Project Bar-B-Q 2016
https://www.projectbarbq.com/reports/bbq16/bbq16r7.htm

Group Report: Modes and Nodes, Project Bar-B-Q 2017
https://www.projectbarbq.com/reports/bbq17/bbq17r7.htm

Wikipedia: Sweyn Forkbeard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweyn_Forkbeard

Forkbeard Technology
https://forkbeardtech.com

Proposed definition of a Room Area Network
http://web.cs.ucla.edu/~ravi/publications/ran_hotnets15.pdf

section 8

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1. Introduction
2. Workgroup Reports Overview
3. #KidsHearingMatters: Designing a Safer In-Ear Listening Experience (for Kids of All Ages)
4. A generalized haptic format standard leveraging existing MIDI infrastructure
5. Using Machine Learning to improve the experience in consumer audio devices
6. Audio Turing Test
7. The Future of In-Ear Voice Assistants (Assistance)
8. Developing a set of audio requirements for the next evolution of Bluetooth
9. Headphones Unlimited: Current Problems and Future Opportunities
10. Is this the real world? Or is this Fantasy?
11. Schedule & Sponsors