What is Bluetooth 6.0?

Bluetooth 6.0 is the latest specification of Bluetooth technology released by Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG). This latest update was introduced in September 2024 with enhancements to existing features including advertising and isochronous channels and breakthrough new features supporting location services. These upgrades and enhancements expand the standard’s feature set to unlock more use cases with interoperable and secure performance. 

What’s New in Bluetooth Version 6.0 

The following are the 6 main new features and feature enhancements developers can expect to take advantage of when building with the new version of the Bluetooth Core Specification: 

Bluetooth Channel Sounding: As the latest gadgets commonly use Bluetooth to locate misplaced devices, the Channel sounding feature was implemented to make this process more accurate. This innovation brings true distance awareness to Bluetooth devices which can be used to greatly improve these “Find My” solutions making it easier and faster to locate lost items. It enables two-way ranging between two Bluetooth LE devices and is set to drastically improve distance measurement accuracy and ranging. 

It uses two new techniques to locate devices the first called round trip time notes the exact time a signal leaves one device, the time it arrives at the second device, and how long it takes to come back to the first device to help calculate the distance between them. The second technique is called PBR which stands for phase-based ranging which measures the difference in the phase of the wave that travels between the two devices. Bluetooth 6.0 can leverage both techniques at the same time to judge distances more accurately. Where the previous method mostly relied on measuring signal strength and angles Channel sounding could allow one to pinpoint a device's location down to a few centimeters under optimal conditions similar to ultra-wideband (UWB)-based locating technology.

Decision-Based Advertising Filtering: “Advertising” is the term used to denote the process where a Bluetooth device is broadcasting its presence to other nearby Bluetooth devices. Advertising is done using primary Bluetooth channels and then data transfer takes place through secondary Bluetooth channels. Using the new Decision-Based Advertising Filtering feature Bluetooth 6.0 devices can use data sent on primary channels to decide if the remaining data on the secondary channels are relevant to what the application is doing. This means the device won't waste battery on scanning for and processing extraneous transmissions hence making them more power efficient. 

Monitoring Advertisers: Bluetooth devices often cannot know if a device they want to connect to is within a close enough range. This means that a device can waste a lot of energy searching for the gadget it's trying to connect to even if it's well out of range. The new “Monitoring Advertisers” feature informs the Bluetooth 6.0 device whenever a connected device moves in and out of range. It tracks when a device moves out of range so the host device will stop trying to connect to it and once the device moves back into range, the host will know that too so it can automatically reconnect. 

Together with the previously mentioned “Decision-Based Advertising Filtering” feature it greatly improves the scanning efficiency of a Bluetooth device. 

Isochronous Adaptation Layer (ISOAL) Enhancement: The Isochronous Adaptation Layer (ISOAL) makes it possible for larger data frames to be transmitted in smaller link-layer packets and ensures the associated timing information that is needed for the correct processing of the data by receivers can be reconstituted. In Bluetooth 6.0, ISOAL has been improved by defining a new framing mode that reduces latency for use cases that are particularly sensitive to this issue. The same feature also improves reliability. 

LL Extended Feature Set: With this advancement, devices can exchange information about the link-layer features that they each support. This capability has been enhanced to support larger numbers of features, which has become necessary as the sophistication and versatility of Bluetooth LE have grown. 

Frame Space Update: Earlier versions of Bluetooth defined a fixed value of 150 µs for the time that separates adjacent connection events. In Bluetooth 6.0, frame spacing is now negotiable and may be shorter or longer than 150 µs. This variable frame spacing feature can improve throughput for things like LE Audio devices, fitness trackers, downloading firmware updates, etc. 

Click here to read the full article on Bluetooth Version 6.0 from the Bluetooth SIG.