Bluetooth Channel Sounding + Bluetooth Core Specification Version 6.0

Transcript

• Steve Statler 0:00

  Welcome to the Mr. Beacon podcast. I am giddy with excitement. It's not often that we get a new version of the Bluetooth spec out, and this isn't a point version. This is version six of the core spec that has come out with a ton of really cool features. The coolest in my opinion, is something called channel sounding, which is really going to make some big waves in the real world, because it's going to bring very accurate range finding to standard Bluetooth devices, not fancy, expensive devices, but regular devices will have centimeter level accuracy, which is going to open up tons of new use cases, tons of business opportunities and some great user experiences. So we are privileged to have the cooperation of the folks at the Bluetooth SIG. They've been regular guests talking about new features, and I was delighted when Damon Barnes, who's their Director of Technical Marketing, agreed to join me to have a conversation about this new feature. So without further ado, let's talk to Damon. The Mr. Beacon ambient IoT podcast is sponsored by williot, bringing intelligence to every single thing. So Damon, thanks so much for coming on the show. Certainly, certainly. So it's actually great timing. I just got the notification along with everyone else that Bluetooth version six is out. Yes, you head up Technical Marketing. I'm sure you've been fielding a ton of questions about that. And you know, one of the major features of Bluetooth six, which was what we're going to focus on, which is channel sounding, range finding. And I think, you know, you think, well, Bluetooth is done. It's there, but it isn't. It keeps on evolving and getting better. And from what I've heard, I'm very excited about this ability to get more precision in terms of distance measurement. And also I'm really intrigued by some of the other features. I want to focus on range sounding because I think it's a subject in its own right. But can you give us just a quick overview of what is in version six of the Bluetooth specification? Yeah,

  Damon Barnes 2:31

  sure. Let me try to give you a little bit of an overview. So about two, two and a half weeks ago, we released Bluetooth core version specification, 6.0. Little bit of a mouthful to get out, but it included, would it include six features total, including channel sounding. I'll go through just a short overview of the other five. Obviously we're going to get into channel sounding. You know what it is, some of the detail around and all that good stuff. But the first one is called decision based advertising, filtering, another mouthful of what this feature actually does. It improves scanning efficiency. It's beneficial when there are a large number of devices that use messaging broadcast, and this feature helps prevent throughput degradation with a large number of devices, for instance, like in a mesh network, are broadcasting messages. So that's dbaf is the acronym that you'll see used like if you were to go to core after the first entry, and then the second feature is called monitoring advertisers. This feature basically enables ACI event, excuse me, ACI events to be used to inform an observer device, like when advertising is going on, help it better understand when a device moves out of range. And this helps provide energy savings, excuse me, an energy savings benefit. And then the third feature is, I saw enhancements. This feature really pertains to Le audio, and it helps reduce latency with respect to connected isochronous, not necessarily connected, excuse me, isochronous communication. And then number four, this one's more of an enhancement. So this is a link layer extended feature set that's so lower level enhancement, but it enables devices to communicate more information about link layer features that are supported by a device. And then lastly, not including channel sounding, of course, is feature called frame Space Update. This adds flexibility to connections or connected isochronous communication. So le audio and even orecasts are features and a use case that can benefit from frame space update. So that's the other five. And then, of course, we have channel sounding, which I won't go into now, right?

  Steve Statler 4:53

  But super interesting we'll may drill into some of those on. And on another occasion, but I'm certainly going to be looking into it. You know, my I work at Willie. It's my day job, and so we're super interested in how we scale to really, really large numbers of Bluetooth devices.

  Damon Barnes 5:12

  Yeah, so there's a couple in there for you. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, but yeah, there's a couple that in there for you to take a look at a little more closely.

  Steve Statler 5:18

  Very good. Well, let's focus on let's get on to channel sounding for that. I'd really like to understand what it is, what it can be used for, and a little bit of how it works. And we'll probably go in that order. So if people's eyes start to roll into the back of their heads on the how it works, then they can, they can drop off, although Right, right. I hope they don't, because we've got kind of an interesting conversation coming about, how you got into the Bluetooth SIG and your music choices, but the Bluetooth specification works really well, but what I've found is people are constantly wanting to use it to try and identify where things are, and so the ability to get more accurate with less infrastructure is really appealing. Will channel channel sounding help with that? What? What does it do? So

  Damon Barnes 6:10

  channel sounding, I'm going to start kind of at a pretty high level, just so, especially if folks that are listening in or watching them aren't that familiar, and then we can kind of, you know, drill down into a little bit more of the detail. But I mean, at kind of, like, the highest level, the way that we messages or explain it from the marketing side, which you see in all of our public communications, we say that Bluetooth channel sounding is a secure, fine ranging feature, and it's going to help enhance the convenience, safety and even security of really any Bluetooth connected device. So if you have a Bluetooth device that's paired, or, excuse me, a device or product that you can pair to another product, the Bluetooth channel sounding feature can be leveraged to essentially allow those devices to understand the distance between one another. And so that's how we kind of explain it at a high level. And then, like, if you talk about, or want to talk about, like, you know, use cases that can benefit from the channel sounding feature.

  Steve Statler 7:14

  But just before we get on to the use cases, I just want to understand what it is. So you need it. You need a connection between the two devices. It's not something you can do just with advertising packets, which is the kind of Hi, I'm here. Phase of the conversation, you broadcast some advertising packets, then you decide you're going to connect, and then once you're connected, then you can start to do this more accurate measurement of distance, and is it? It's just distance. It's not like angle arrival, where it's distance and direction, or

  Damon Barnes 7:49

  that is correct. That's a those are a couple important clarifications to make. And I might, you know, kind of outline it a little something like follows. So channel sounding was, well, let me first hit on another point. And just to reemphasize, channel sounding was designed to, you know, just be a feature for Bluetooth connected devices there. You know, there's non connected or connection analysis, I guess. How we say it? I'm in the Bluetooth CX side, or on the Bluetooth technology space features for distance measurement and direction that are separate of channel sounding. And so what we kind of say is we have for Bluetooth technology, we actually have a portfolio, a blue of device positioning features, and the list of the portfolio kind of goes something like follows, so that you have we do the advertising broadcast that allows you to basically determine a device's presence that can be connect that's connectionless. You don't need a connection for that obviously, and then historically, the way that designers and product manufacturers would determine the distance between devices would be to use RSSI or receive signal strength. This can be connection oriented or connectionless. And then direction finding, of course, you know a feature from 2019, 2020, can be connection oriented or connectionless, and that gives you the direction. So the number, the degrees you are, you know, where you need to go. And then, you know, channel sounding is the most recent addition to this portfolio, connection oriented only, device distance only. And you know, the nice thing about channel sounding, and maybe I'm going a little too far, but we can back off, is that, you know, you can get centimeter level distance measurement accuracy with this new feature. And

  Steve Statler 9:41

  that's pretty amazing. So centimeter level, distance accuracy, and we'll go into how and why, but that is really, really cool, and I want to just go back and recap what you said to make sure I heard it properly and give people a chance to to absorb it. So you. There's you start off with presence. So you know that the advertising packets, which are basically the things that my printer uses to tell my computer that it's available for use, or that your earbuds use to tell the phone that it's the earbuds are nearby and available for connection, that can basically do presence, which is, I'm here, and I you can receive me, and then you okay, you're here, but are you really close, or are you really far, or are you somewhere in between? And for that, you can basically look at how strong is the signal that I'm receiving. So like a lighthouse. If the light is bright, you're close. If the light is dim, you're far away. And if the light is somewhere in between that, then you're kind of medium. But it has problems because, you know, radio waves, signals go up and down based on all sorts of things, not just proximity. So that's why you kind of want other tools and techniques. But the good thing is, it's, it's relatively easy and straightforward, and you don't need a connection, and pretty much every device can do it, you know, if you every device can advertise. And so relatively straightforward. And then, of course, we've got the angle of arrival thing, which we've covered on other episodes, where you get this you have more sophisticated antennas, so you have to have specialist devices, and you can say this is the degree of the angle that this is coming from, and so that allows us to infer distance when you have more than one receiver. But the cool thing about what you've described is I can find out distance, and I can just have one device talking to another device. I don't need three devices. There's going to be a ton of applications for that. I would think, let's go into why I would want to do that. Then what you know? What were some of the use cases that drove the creation of this new capability?

  Damon Barnes 12:04

  Yeah, certainly. I will say that as far as the use cases go, there was like one lead use case that was a little that was front and center, I should say, and that was digital key for automotive, for automotive access control. And so that was the number one, and that's where we're seeing the most. I shouldn't say the most interest. I should say as far as the long as far as like traction goes, like market adoption and whatnot.

  Steve Statler 12:31

  So you want to know that these you're seeing hearing us, you've got a car park, you've got a ton of people, and you want to stop someone doing something nefarious or accidental. And you want to know how close is this Bluetooth key? I guess the key could be a smartphone. Yeah, to the phone

  Damon Barnes 12:51

  could be a fob, but, yeah, and so it's, and you know what it you know is, you know, available today was with certain I mean, it's the way the future works. Is kind of available today already, but, you know, enables, you know, passive entry, right? So, you know, as you get close and then you because the level of position, precision, the security, you know that it's the person who's actually in possession of the phone or the fob. That's, you know, either you know about to are getting close to the car and close enough to unlock and allow them in, or they've gotten maybe farther enough away after they shut the door to lock the door. And so that's really the, the front and center use case for for automotive. I mean, obviously there's other, you know, passive use cases around, you know, call it just like automotive for passive, you know, vehicle systems. But those are certainly possible also, but the entry and exit and locking the doors really front and center. And so that also applies to, you know, access control, you know, at homes, doors garage, so that's, you know, kind of cool as well as you think about, like the automation that can be possible. And then, you know, because so many devices already have Bluetooth, it's not a big step to, you know, implement the feature as it might be if you were, you know, going for another wireless technology or something like that. And then you know that you're talking just a little bit more about use cases. And then I'll pause for a second. I mean, there's really, you know, we kind of touched on this a little bit. I'll just emphasize one more time though, that in really, any bleachers, connected device you know, that you paired, or a bleed tooth device that you pair to another device could potentially take advantage of channel sounding. And, you know, that's, you know, a really large number of devices, millions, close to billions of devices. It will be billions of devices by, you know, 2028, and then. But, you know, as far as use cases like industrial you could, you know, look at, you know, HMI type solutions potentially taking advantage of channel sounding controller devices that are gaming. HMI. Is my bad. Let me explain a human machine interface. So using, basically a tablet, phone or some type of like control interface in a manufacturing or industrial facility to control machines, or could even be, you know, to program robots, things of that nature, and so, you know, understanding the precise distance between those two devices is, you know, positive that helps, you know, improve safety is like one of the main, you know, benefits that you could think of there. What

  Steve Statler 15:30

  will a device maker need to do to use channel sounding like for angle of arrival they had, you know, you basically make a device that's the size of a small frisbee with quite a complex antenna, and you've got yourself a, I don't know, a 345, $100 device, yeah, what do I need to do if I want to include channel sounding into the smart Speaker I'm making? Yeah,

  Damon Barnes 15:59

  that's a great question, and got a couple answers for you here. So you do not need the super complex. I shouldn't say super complex, because there's a reason. Angle of arrival, you know, requires the array. You do not need multi antenna solutions to enable channel sounding. You can take advantage or run the channel sounding feature with wireless SOC system on chip, or IC, whatever type of integrated circuit that's designed in with a single antenna. That's number one. As far as the integrated circuit goes. That's going to be something that if, like, a device manufacturer already has a bluetooth chip, they will need to check with their semiconductor manufacturer to see if the device will support channel sounding. Channel sounding does bring in some new physical layer type stuff. I will say, I won't get into the detail, because we're not to that part yet. So there is a possibility that, like, you know, a revved or new chip might be needed to support channel sounding and, you know, just for the more advanced RF capabilities that are necessary, but that's kind of doesn't really like the two main considerations as far as like adding the feature

  Steve Statler 17:16

  so it's part of Bluetooth six. What's the story on backwards compatibility. Does this mean that I will have to buy an iPhone 17 in order to potentially use this with my phone? Should I guess it's up to Apple whether they even support it. There's this kind of you have a chip that has the chip vendor has to support it. I don't know what else. This doesn't sound like. You need a fancy antenna, but there's going to be firmware and operating system software changes that will be required, right?

  Damon Barnes 17:50

  That that that is definitely correct. I mean, you will need two devices that both support the channel sounding feature, as long as both devices support the channel sounding feature. You know, the great thing about Bluetooth, you know, it is obviously a wireless standard. I don't really do say that, but I will say it. And so, you know, the functionality, you know, from you know, the controller level up to the host level, is interoperable. So as long as both devices support Bluetooth, channel sounding, it's your IC supports it. I'm not going to say that. It's like, you know, a snap of the finger, but it's, you know, pretty straightforward process to add support to a product,

  Steve Statler 18:26

  yeah. And when will the chips be available that support this feature?

  Damon Barnes 18:32

  Yeah? So as far as so let me when we're talking about product support, there are, we get, we get asked this question all the time, and you know, it's that we think chip supports coming this year. There are a number of different solutions, like EV case that are available already. And what is an EVK, sorry, eval kit. So a semiconductor company like a let me name. Rattle off a couple names of companies that have announced support. Me think about the me think about this. So NXP Silicon Labs and I believe ti all have channel sounding solutions. They're early implementations, but, you know, they are marketing and you know, trying to sell those solutions to their customers today. And so the short direct answer again, is like enabling technology. Chips will be available this year, great

  Steve Statler 19:25

  and before the end of the year. And have Nordic said anything? I know you don't speak for Nordic, but Nordic,

  Damon Barnes 19:30

  I am not sure the exact status, but Nordic is a company that we're saying is supporting channel sounding they partnered up with us on like the marketing and all that stuff. I'm not exactly sure of their eval kit, but they are definitely going to be, you know, a leader as far you know, having support. I can't say whether or not it's going to be this year or not, but I would expect it pretty soon.

  Steve Statler 19:52

  Okay, so it sounds like all of the major Bluetooth chipsets will be supporting this feature, and then it'll be matter. Of deciding, the people that are building the products will decide if they are going to use it. And I noticed you quoted Denso in part of the announcement. So I'm assuming, you know, they make car parts, and I'm assuming they were part of the the the group there that was actually working on the standard. Is that stuff secret or not is the the companies that worked on the standard is that confidential? I'm

  Damon Barnes 20:26

  not in what you can see. Well, let me see what I can share. Where you can see in core version six, dot, you can see a list of companies I have like, you know, I compiled a little list of like companies just like, in preparation for this, that are supporting channel sounding it's fine to say that denzo is supporting it. So and I left off a couple of minutes ago, Samsung Electronics, I think you probably saw they made pretty positive statements. They have a really nice demo that they showed off at our member Summit. Last year's two prototype smartphones had an app, and you could see the distance being displayed between the two phones. That was nice, synchronized. So that was really nice. Who else did I leave off here?

  Steve Statler 21:07

  Apple. They're

  Damon Barnes 21:08

  on the board. Apple is on the board. But you know how Apple is they haven't. You know they're, they're, they have a very good poker face. So we're not sure if they're gonna support it or not. What I can tell you, though, and this is public information, is that support is coming to Android. We have heard, and you can see in a sample code that it's slated to come to Android 15. And it's cute, if you're familiar with those releases, it's QP, QPR three. And that, you know, the really neat thing is that it the sound like, if you were to go to the the sample code android.com site and search channel sounding you could, you could find a framework for a ranging profile, or, excuse me, ranging service for the client cert clients and server devices. And then also, they have a test app available. And so that's really early days for that to already kind of be in place, and it to, you know, kind of be available, you know, in public domain. So we're super excited about that. So, you know, you know, I don't know if it's going to be this year. Actually, I wouldn't even want to go there. But, I mean, supports definitely coming to Android. And so that's, you know, super exciting. That

  Steve Statler 22:19

  is exciting. You can imagine they have their own brand of asset tags, battery powered tags, that this would be just amazing, like the real Geiger counter feature, which, which would be very helpful. Yep, it will be very interesting to see what Apple do. As you say, poker face, hard to tell, but I was so disappointed when they put ultra wide band in their phones rather than angle of arrival. But, you know, my hope is that this will be something that kind of makes them think about using Bluetooth for finding the the air tags that they they make, and that would be a cool application.

  Damon Barnes 23:03

  Yeah, yeah,

  Steve Statler 23:04

  that's good to know about what it's going to take to support. And, you know, presume so there's an operating system element to this as well. Just because you've got the chipset, that's not enough, just because the device is integrated the chipset, that's not enough. You need some APIs to to access this. And I miss so I'm wondering if there's anything else I need to ask you about the operating system support, other than Yes, Android is going to have it that. I guess there's other software platforms, Linux and the like that will probably end up,

  Damon Barnes 23:43

  yeah, I think, I think they will. I don't have the detail especially, I mean, I don't even have the detail period to say publicly what's going to happen, you know, on the Linux side. But I, you know, the thing that we're really excited about, and just to re emphasize that, you know, we have a ranging profile and service that's use case agnostic to, you know, the service is what basically enables that, the APIs. And so that's, you know, that's not adopted yet, but it's targeting adoption by the end of the year. I The date that I saw most recently, it looks like it's, you know, late November, so it could be December, but so that'll be in place. And so with that, you know, I mentioned it a moment ago. You go to the Android, you know, code search site, and you can see that that framework, that there's a framework for using the service. So that's, you know, really great. And so that's there. That foundation is there. And, you know, and it's not tied to a specific use case. So that's actually, you know, quite nice.

  Steve Statler 24:44

  Do you have a sense of how power efficient this feature is? Because, you know, my, my general sense is that with RSSI, you know, you end up. The received strength indicator. Approach for non connected distance measurement, you're basically spraying packets out all the time and looking at the signal strength. Is this more or less same? Or don't know in terms of power efficiency, we

  Damon Barnes 25:18

  have members testing, but we don't have an answer that we can give right now, that's like, is it better or worse? I mean, just to be, you know, really open. I mean, with channel sounding you, you are adding a an additional procedure to, basically, you know, do run the signal exchange. So there, you know, anytime you're running, you know, or a signal, there's going to be power draw, right? Yeah. And whether it's more of a power draw or less than, you know, RSSI with Bluetooth we've had, we've actually asked for some testing on that, and so it's kind of underway, but we don't have the results yet.

  Steve Statler 25:51

  Okay, well, be interesting to see. So let's just, is there anything else you can share about use cases that you've seen the kinds of applications. Let's

  Damon Barnes 26:05

  see what use cases so I will say that I wouldn't be surprised to see we talked for a few minutes about digital key but on like the Find my devices or find my networks, which you're seeing them called. Now, I wouldn't be surprised to see you know, announcements, not only, you know, in for the US and em markets, but maybe in Greater China as well. About, you know, solutions, potentially ecosystems, that you know, support find my, and maybe, or maybe even, you know, mentioning, you know, leveraging the channel sounding feature. And, you know, find my is kind of like traditionally, or oftentimes just thinking of like the little tracker tags or whatever. But, you know, the interesting thing about channel sounding being connected oriented, I mean, almost any device really could kind of turn into a find my type solution. And so I'm going to give you one that just kind of goes to my head with a challenge that I deal with, with the kids. So, you know, a lot of like TV remotes these days, right? They're Bluetooth, at least some of the newer models, high end TVs, you know, it sure would be nice if you could, you know, use your TV to kind of help you identify where that remote was when it's under a couch cushion, under the, you know, something like that. So, you know, you have to have the, you know, remote pair to the TV. And so, you know, that could be an interesting use case. And, you know, it probably ends up being something that's controlled by a mobile app on a phone or something like that. So it's, but that's, you know, certainly possible. So that's just kind of an interesting one that I, I think about, it relates to, like, kind of making the Find my networks use case, if I can just generically call it that, you know, mean more than just a track item finding tag, well,

  Steve Statler 27:49

  you're saying that triggered another thought in my head, which is, yes, channel sounding is essentially just giving you the distance, not the angle. But presumably you could have two radios, say, either side of that TV screen, that are both doing the channel sounding to your remote. And if it's centimeter level accuracy, then you can do some trilateration, basically, you know, you draw the radius, see where it sits, and you've, you've got yourself some really nice X, Y, indoor positioning or outdoor positioning, even, yeah,

  Damon Barnes 28:27

  yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, things, tricks, techniques, you you know this very well. You know, it's system level that can be done. And so, yeah, you let you know using this channel sounding feature with other techniques, yes, you can kind of do some pretty cool things. So the, you know, it's why we're super excited about it. And you saw great press coverage about, you know, the feature over the last couple of weeks. So, yeah,

  Steve Statler 28:48

  great. Well, congratulations on that. So how does it work?

  Damon Barnes 28:55

  How does channel sounding work? Okay, so let's um, because some folks may not be. Let's kind of start at the high level, at a high level, I guess, and just I'll run through a couple of little pitches I have for you, and then you can query me back and forth. But so, and most basically, I want to, kind of just to reiterate connection, connected Bluetooth devices, devices that have been paired so a one to one topology, these two devices both have to support channel sounding like I said, and what's going to really happen here is there's going to be a signal exchange between the two devices. The two devices the primary there's two distance measurement measurement methods, but the one for precise distance measurement is called phase based ranging. With phase based ranging, what's happening is one device, which is called an initiator. This is the device that wants to measure the distance to another device. It basically sends a signal to the other device, which is called the reflector, which you know, as you might suspect, reflects. Signal back. This process is repeated across multiple frequencies after that initial send and then the distance between the devices. That's calculated based on the phase difference between the transmitted and received signals over those frequency and now, like I said, it's based on phase based raining. This is like a well proven, like, distance measurement technique that's been used for years and years, but we've now implemented the Bluetooth version or flavor of phase space ranging, and so that's how you're able to get high accuracy distance measurements with Bluetooth channel sounding. And you know, one other just point on there is, like, you know, it's very accurate, but we're also seeing, like really good, really steady performance over good distances. We have testing results up to 50 meters today, and theoretically, the the solution, or feature rather, should work pretty well. You know, 100 meters, even up to 150 meters. We haven't done testing between at the 100 250 meter mark. Or had members do testing yet, but we're hoping to get that done, you know, maybe later in the year. But yeah, so that's the high accurate, high accuracy distance measurement portion of the feature. So, yeah, okay,

  Steve Statler 31:15

  so I'm gonna just my brain's chugging away trying to think about how this works. So, you know, radio waves a bit like waves on the ocean. They they go up and they go down, and so they have, there's a, there's a, there's an angle to to that change, yeah, and you're able to somehow understand the phase that that is at. And so given that that the distance between the peak and the trough is fixed based on the the frequency that you're broadcasting at, if you move forward by a centimeter, then you'll basically that that wave. You'll interrupt it at a slightly different point in its cresting and and falling. And I'm assuming that if you are doing that with waves that are at different frequencies, so they have different gaps between the peaks. And you kind of measure, you know, what is the angle of the phase on a higher frequency versus a very slightly lower frequency? Then you that's kind of how you, you work it out. But how do you know that? I mean, this might, there might be, I don't know how many waves they're going to be between some car keys and the car but how do you know whether there's twice as many waves? How do you know that you're one meter wave versus two meters away? I can see why. You know. Oh, I'm one meter away, and then I'm 99 centimeters away. But how do you know how many of those waves have gone up and down in between the

  Damon Barnes 33:03

  Well, there's two, there's, there's, there's a time element also. So with the channel sound, with phase based ranging, there's, you know, the waves that you've done a very good job of just explaining. But then there's also time, how long it takes as well. So it's really those two facts. Those two were the devices, really the initiators, gathering phase and time information. And that's where we're able to, you know, run a calculation based on a formula to determine the distance between the two devices. And, you know, one, one point to note there on that is so the channel sounding feature doesn't actually, or the devices don't use the channel sounding feature to calculate distance. That is done by a ranging algorithm that runs on the application. So the just to kind of circle back to what I was just clarifying is that, you know, we get the phase data with the time data that's passed by the controller, basically up to the host, and the application is running a ranging algorithm, and it runs, it actually spits out a distance measurement calculation.

  Steve Statler 34:17

  So you say it's an application, but is that an application running on the central processor unit on my phone, or is it running on the controller in the system on chip?

  Damon Barnes 34:29

  No, no. It would be on the host on Yeah, it wouldn't. It wouldn't be on the controller. Okay, clear.

  Steve Statler 34:38

  All right, that's good. So amazing. You're looking at the difference in time it takes for a signal to get from the key to the car and then back again. You know the clocks to do that. It's incredible that they're accurate enough to Yes, to make all this stuff work. I'm not an electrical. Engineer. So it all seems like magic to me, but I appreciate your explaining it. And I should add that, you know, your team have put some really excellent written materials. If someone wants to read this slowly and go into the two levels of detail below what we've covered then, then bluetooth.com, it's all there, and it's really comprehensive. So very good. Well, is there anything else I should have asked you about this that people have been asking. Let

  Damon Barnes 35:29

  me see if there was something else I was wanting to tell you that maybe we didn't talk about. We talked about Android. I wanted to, oh, yeah, here's another thing. And we talked about digital key for automotive. And this is really goes back to market traction and adoption. I think it's just something to point out, good to point out you. I know you've probably already seen these, but just for the audience listening in or watching, in Greater China, there's two connected car consortiums or standards bodies. One's called the intelligent connected car open Alliance, ICC, OA, and then another one's called the intelligent connected car ecosystem Alliance, ICCE, yeah, love some acronyms. Anyhow, both of those companies are, were, you know, publicly supportive of the channel sounding feature, and so, you know, we're, you know, they haven't said, You know what they're going to do yet, but, you know, just the fact that they were willing to step in and, you know, go on record with us. We think that this feature in Greater China, you know, massive market, has a lot of potential. And, you know, we may see some, you know, pretty quick adoption, you know, you know, in the Greater China market. So just grow that

  Steve Statler 36:40

  interest in APAC. Yeah, well, and I know, you know, back to my day job, back at williot, we'd been looking at the ambient IoT standards. And of course, Bluetooth is ahead there by a mile. It's the technology that we use in our battery free Bluetooth tags. But there is work going on to try and catch up in the in the cellular space, and that's being driven by the Chinese as well. So it seems like in China they're really taking this digital to physical convergence thing seriously, yeah, and they have the scale to to put it to good use and to get the volume and to prove out the use cases and build out the network. So that's a good endorsement. So Damon, you work at the Bluetooth SIG. In my mind, this is an amazing organization. You know, a relatively small group of people is influencing the standards that are part of literally over a billion devices that get sold every year. So I think all of us technical people are kind of closeted rock stars. We want to create something and have a big audience. And Bluetooth certainly has a big audience. How do you get this job playing in the Rolling Stones of the wireless technology business?

  Damon Barnes 38:10

  Well, I must say, I do feel like I was very fortunate to be able to join the SIG coming up on three years ago. The way it all transpired was pretty quick and seamless. Actually, a recruiter reached out to me over LinkedIn, someone who's still at the SIG, part of sig staff, and asked me if I'd consider talking to them about a role, and we had a talk, and then I had to maybe, like, three or four, maybe five more talks with various people, and just everything fell into place really quickly and seemed to make sense. So it was kind of like a no brainer for me at the end of the day. And I couldn't be happier to work here. I mean, it is a, I would say, fairly prestigious, and, you know, call it like the wireless industry. So, you know, I'm loving it coming up on three years.

  Steve Statler 38:59

  So what was it about your career that you felt set you up for for this role? Oh,

  Damon Barnes 39:06

  gosh, it's been almost a decade coming, but I'll just give you like real quick overview. So I started working in the wireless technology space, primarily in Wi Fi and cellular, at a startup that had acquired but acquired by AT and T back in 2005 and, you know, I worked in Wi Fi service provider type space, you know, up until 2017 and then moved to semiconductor side, where I worked at Silicon Labs for almost five years. So that just that exposure to, you know, Wi Fi for more than a decade. And then, you know, at Silicon Labs a broad portfolio. They have a really broad portfolio of IoT wireless connectivity. I think it's what set me up well to be able to join the SIG. And then, you know, start getting, you know, fairly specialized, obviously, with Bluetooth technology over the last several years or few years.

  Steve Statler 39:55

  And how big is the special interest group? Roughly the size of this. Off, I

  Damon Barnes 40:00

  would estimate it's probably 170 ish people total. That does include probably somewhere between, you know, 40 to 50, maybe contractors, but yeah, so pretty small, very nimble organization. And, you know, we operate very much like a startup, very

  Steve Statler 40:18

  good. Well, part of the tradition of this show is that I ask guests about three songs that have meaning to them. Are you? Do you enjoy music? Is that part of your life?

  Damon Barnes 40:30

  I do enjoy music. I got a little, probably bit of a curveball for you, maybe, as my response is like, before I get to that, yeah, that teaser, I will say that growing up, my parents were both very much music was a very big part of their life, and so kind of something was always playing throughout the years, in the 80s, as I was a little kid, and all that good stuff. But so as far as like, my songs go, the curveball for you is I kind of, you kind of picked a few that kind of have meeting meaning, meaning to me for different reasons. So I have two kids, nine, almost 10 year old daughter and a son who just turned six. And so I get what I asked my daughter last night, when I was kind of, you know, looking through the material and getting ready for this, I was like, What's one of your what's your favorite song right now? And so she is, like, textbook, big Swifty. And so her favorite song is right now, is cardigan from the folklore album, which is, you know, a few years or so old. Personally, because I, you know, get to listen to Taylor Swift quite a bit on that same album. Album, I kind of have drawn to the song called exile. It's a collaboration with Bon Iver. Think that's a kind of a neat song where he starts off.

  Steve Statler 41:56

  I got to ask you about Taylor Swift, though, before we move on. Okay, yes, yes. Have you been under immense pressure to take your daughter to one of the concerts?

  Damon Barnes 42:05

  Yes, constantly, constantly, and so I hope to one day make that happen, but it'll have to be the next round of, I think, concert series, I guess, whenever that happens. But nothing happening this year for those small for those those few stops she has the remainder of the year that was at least a little little bit too crazy short notice. But I think if someone call it like the bucket list or something to get done for her when she still relatively young,

  Steve Statler 42:34

  yeah, that's great. Yeah, I remember taking my niece to see the spy skills and when they were a thing. And that was like, I knew that would be really memorable. I'm not a big spy skills fan. I mean, not that I've got nothing against them, but not my cup of tea. And so when we got the opportunity to go to Taylor Swift, really, but I went, and it was just one of the best experiences, concert experiences I've ever had. Just superlative, straight stage production, kind of a marathon event, incredible buzz in the crowd, and just the great musicianship and the whole production, video, stage costumes, performance, just incredible, really, really impressive. So definitely worth having on your bucket list.

  Damon Barnes 43:26

  I will say, I mean, prior to her becoming, like a big fan, that's probably happened, you know, gradually, maybe not so gradually, but over the last couple of years, I never really personally listened to Taylor Swift either. You know, obviously who she was. But then, you know, over the last year, 18 months, I've become much more familiar part of the household, almost. So

  Steve Statler 43:46

  that's great. Well, it helps you grow your children's interests become yours. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, okay. Number one, number two,

  Damon Barnes 43:54

  all right. And then number two, my son. He is only six, just turned six, but he has a he has a very he has a significant draw to music. Maybe it's like his grandfather. I don't from his grandfather, I don't know, but so and his his favorite band right now might throw you for a little bit of loot. Maybe not, I don't know, but it's Imagine Dragons. Initially, his favorite songs were radioactive and oh my gosh, I'm forgetting that one, but radioactive. But right now, the current favorite is bleeding out. And I double checked this with him yesterday, and he was like, yes, you need to say that one bleeding out. I was like, What about Michael Jackson? Because he's a big Michael Jackson fan. Also likes thriller, you know, all the hits and stuff, but bleeding out, it is. Imagine Dragons for my six year old.

  Steve Statler 44:42

  All right, I see where you're going. You're getting all these extra tracks in, surreptitiously, very cunning. I appreciate that. I

  Damon Barnes 44:50

  wasn't really trying to do that, but it's just more context. I guess. I don't know. Maybe I should have been more brief of my answer. Not at

  Steve Statler 44:56

  all. That's what it's all about. I do this, man. Leave, because I just enjoy having this conversation. And what was your third choice?

  Damon Barnes 45:04

  Okay, and the third one is more more close to home for me. And so I mentioned that the outset, that my parents were, you know, big music fans. And when I was How old was I 22 the summer before my senior year in college, I did a study abroad that was primarily in Edinburgh, Scotland. Then we went to London, France and some other stuff. But while we were in Edinburgh, The Rolling Stones were coming, and they just so happened to have a guess. That's a little bit of a spoiler, but they just so happened to have, you know, it wasn't sold out or whatever. So we went to this soccer stadium, or, excuse me, football stadium that was, you know, Edinboro, I don't know exactly where the main soccer stadium, and saw them put on a show. And it was, it was an incredible show, kind of, like what you're mentioning, with Taylor Swift. And I think it was the first real earnest, like large concert that I ever went to. So it had a big impact on me. And they played, you know, obviously all the hits put on a great show. You know, it was 25 years ago. So, you know, they were still a little younger than they are today. But so as far as the song goes, one of the songs that my parents used to always play, and I went and, like you found one that, like, really spoke to me that they would always play in the home was start me up. So that would be number three, Rolling Stone start me up.

  Steve Statler 46:25

  Very good. Well, I'm so glad you chose that one. It's a great song, and tied in with my Rolling Stones reference earlier. So that kind of worked out. The thing I love about this is it always triggers off memories for me. So my Rolling Stone story is round about the same time. I wonder if it was on the same tour. My wife and I were on holiday in Spain, in San Sebastian, we were staying at this quite nice hotel, and it's like we go to check in and there's just something buzzing. It's like the level of excitement and staffing was really intense, and I'm like, There's something going on. And they're like, No, No, nothing's going on. Okay, check in. We go to walk out, and as we're walking out, this huge bus pulls in with a small van in front of it. The van pulls up, and basically the Rolling Stones get out of the van, and we're like, mouth open as Keith, Keith Richards walks past, and so basically we were staying in this hotel for the same duration as them and their entourage was like downstairs eating, perhaps with us. And unfortunately, Mick Jagger did not join us for a for a quest on or any paella. But it was just being in proximity of that orbit was so cool, and it could have been on the same tour, because it was around about 25 years ago,

  Damon Barnes 47:59

  that was an incredible experience. So that's awesome, yeah.

  Steve Statler 48:03

  Well, Damon, thanks very much for chatting with us, and I feel smarter as a result of getting that knowledge infusion from you. And congratulations on the standard. I think it's going to be really successful, and I can't wait to start using products that have Bluetooth core specification six and channel sounding as a part of it.

  Damon Barnes 48:28

  Well. Thank you for having me very much, Steve, this is lots of fun. Happy to come back anytime.

  Steve Statler 48:35

  So that was my conversation with Damon Barnes of the Bluetooth special interest group, and I hope you found that as interesting as I did, you're a hardcore Mr. Beacon listener or viewer, because he stayed to the end. And I think people like us will probably be sitting in the bathtub, standing in the shower, or taking the dog for a walk, and ideas for how to use this new precise location measurement technique will probably be popping into our heads. I wouldn't be at all surprised if new companies get formed to commercialize these ideas. And the thing that amazes me, a lot of the you know, the building blocks one level, they're super sophisticated, and then it's really simple. It's basically about being able to measure the distance. It's very simple. And then you look at the next layer up, and you see new businesses, new experiences, new use cases that are created using these simple building blocks. So that's what this podcast is all about. We love to help keep you up to date, get you up to speed on things. Help new people learn about this digital, physical convergence, the Internet of Things, world that we work in. If you've enjoyed this episode, please do tell other people about it. It's all. All about spreading the knowledge and join us next time. So until then, stay safe, enjoy the journey. And of course, my thanks to everyone that helped make this episode properly, the folks at the Bluetooth SIG and Aaron Hammack, our fearless editor who has to listen to me more than I do. And Sierra Walden, who helps publish these episodes and get them out there. So take care, see you next time you.