CES 2020 Provides a Glimpse of the Next Decade of Wireless

CES 2020 was a landmark show for Short-Range Wireless (SRW) connectivity technologies. A number of key announcements, demonstrations, and new products were unveiled that help to demonstrate the future of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Ultra-Wideband (UWB), and other wireless technologies over next decade. Arguably the most important of these are the arrival of Low Energy Audio, Bluetooth’s next-generation audio capabilities, and the Wi-Fi Alliance’s unveiling of Wi-Fi 6E as the branding for Wi-Fi 6 devices that will be capable of operation in the soon-to-be-made-available 6 GHz band. Alongside these, several other announcements that demonstrate continued innovation in the SRW arena are also worth highlighting.

LE Audio: The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) finally unveiled its next generation of Bluetooth Audio, also known as LE Audio. The new generation brings a number of new features and enhancements, including the following:

• In contrast to conventional, “classic” Bluetooth Audio, LE Audio leverages Bluetooth Low Energy radios for operation.
• A new Low Complexity Communication Codec (LC3) is capable of delivering high quality audio at lower data rates, allowing for reduced power consumption
• Multi-stream audio enables multiple, independent, synchronized audio streams to be transmitted between a source and one or multiple audio sink devices such as true-wireless earbuds or speakers.
• LE Audio will enable the development of enhanced Bluetooth hearing aids thanks to its ability to capitalize on low-power, high quality, multi-stream features.
• Broadcast Audio enables an audio source device to broadcast one or several audio streams to an unlimited number of audio sinks, enabling personal or location-based audio sharing. Users can share their audio between family and friends via their smartphone, while public audio sharing enables users to tune into audio streams at venues such as gyms, airports, theaters, bars, conference centers, or other venues, providing an optimized and more tailored audio experience than ever before. This could potentially be utilized for visitors with hearing loss or to offer services in multiple languages.

Nordic Semiconductor showed its intent to play a key role in the LE Audio market by launching an LE Audio Evaluation Platform in partnership with stack developer Packetcraft. CEVA announced the general availability of its RivieraWaves Bluetooth Low Energy and Dual Mode IPs with LE Audio support. Other companies such as Qualcomm, Goodix, and Dialog demonstrated LE Audio at the Bluetooth SIG’s launch event. ABI Research believes that Low Energy Audio will open up tremendous new opportunities for LE silicon vendors in the coming years as the market transitions away from Classic Audio, as well as new opportunities in public venues.

Wi-Fi 6E: Ahead of the show, the Wi-Fi Alliance introduced Wi-Fi 6E as the terminology that will be leveraged to distinguish Wi-Fi 6 capable devices that can operate in the 6 GHz band. While the technology is still subject to various regional regulatory approvals, 6 GHz Wi-Fi has the potential to massively improve the performance, capacity, latency, and reliability of the technology that will help it address new applications and better serve existing ones in the years to come. Targeted applications include mesh backhaul, 4K/8K video, low latency Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) applications, gaming, and high-speed tethering.

A number of vendors also introduced 6E capable chipsets at CES 2020. Broadcom introduced a comprehensive enterprise and residential portfolio of Wi-Fi 6E chipsets and showcased them at the show. These include a combination of dual and tri-band 4x4, 3x3, and 2x2 solutions with a combination of 80 MHz and 160 MHz support. Alongside this, Celeno announced that it was adding Wi-Fi 6E support to its CL8000 series of chips, with the entire family capable of supporting the entire 6 GHz spectrum under regulatory evaluation (5925-7125 MHz) with 160 MHz support. Their 6E products will sample in Q2 of 2020. Other chipset vendors are likely to follow suit in the near future.

While much still needs to be done from a regulatory perspective, 2020 will be a hugely important year for bringing 6E technology to the forefront. Following the show, Ofcom in the United Kingdom announced that it is proposing that 500 MHz of the 6 GHz spectrum should be made available for Wi-Fi. To date, the FCC has led the charge on 6 GHz Wi-Fi with an ambition of making 1.2GHz available for Wi-Fi in the US. Current expectations are that the Federal Communication Commission (FCC)’s rules for 6 GHz will be published in early 2020 and come into effect in early 2021.

While Wi-Fi and Bluetooth’s huge announcements dominated much of the discussion, other innovations in the SRW space were also worth noting.

The ZigBee Alliance continued to promote its Project Connected Home Over IP working group, aiming to promote the adoption of a new connectivity standard that will improve compatibility for smart home products leveraging the Internet Protocol (IP). Key members of the group include Amazon, Apple, and Google.

The Z-Wave Alliance hosted new products at the show, following on from the news that Silicon Labs planned to open up the Z-Wave specification as a multi-source wireless standard, enabling chipset and software vendors to join the Z-Wave ecosystem. This is anticipated to be made available in the second half of 2020.

UWB continued its recent momentum with a growing presence at the show. HID Global showcased the secure access control capabilities of the technology, while Continental announced it was working on a UWB-based system for keyless entry via smartphones. Chipset provider NXP also demonstrated innovative use cases for UWB at the show, including tracking and navigation, personalized smart homes, connected car, and building access control.

Wi-Fi 6’s rollout continued to accelerate at the show with a number of product announcements, while Silicon Labs and Quuppa partnered to develop a greater accuracy indoor location solution leveraging direction finding. Atmosic’s M3 battery-free Bluetooth System-on-Chip (SoC) solution received the CES Best of Innovation Award in the Embedded Technologies category.

CES 2020 provided a brief glimpse of SRW’s continued innovation. Though many technical and market challenges remain, trends such as 6 GHz Wi-Fi, Low Energy Audio, reduced power consumption, improved location accuracy, the arrival of UWB, and increased collaboration and interoperability between different vendors and technologies will help to drive SRW adoption over the next few years.