Bluetooth Channel Sounding: the Next Leap in Bluetooth Innovation

Edit: It seems I'm wrong. Channel sounding requires an encrypted connection. It's not something that can be done between a passive device and your phone.

It will allow things like secure entry (walk up to a door and it opens, be near your car and you can open it), finding your devices (lost keys, headphones, remotes, etc.), auto-unlocking for your laptop, and more.

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This is a really cool technology that is going to allow essentially indoor GPS. Imagine going to a mall, and you open a map on your phone, and it immediately knows where you are to under 1m error.

New devices, such as Pixel 10 already support channel sounding. Basically it's alternative to UWB. One phone sends signals on multiple frequencies, another receives them. Obviously devices should be connected via BT. Also tracking people already works with BT/WiFi RSSI (signal strength). Channel Sounding works better because it works even when the signal line of sight is obstructed, for ex. headphones lost under pillow.

I am pursuing a PhD in indoor localization, and UWB is still far superior. That is the reason why major phone companies still include a UWB chip and are not switching to BLE 6.0.

I have compared them, and because BLE is a narrowband signal, it is highly susceptible to Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) conditions compared to UWB.

I also attended a prototype presentation by a large European silicon company. I noticed that even in their demo, BLE did not achieve 30 cm accuracy, but rather hovered around 1 m.

I have only tested PBR and RTT ranging with a simple Kalman Filter, so maybe someone has found a clever combination of these data sources (I hope).

What an unfortunate name.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sounding

    > Sounding is the act of inserting a metal rod into your urethra.