Why you should care about Bluetooth LE Audio

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imgtec.com, Feb. 24, 2020 – 

Earlier this week, we announced our new iEB110 IP, a complete Bluetooth Low Energy IP solution based on the recently announced Bluetooth SIG version 5.2 specification. The iEB110 Bluetooth Low Energy v5.2 IP contains the RF, controller software and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) host stack, providing manufacturers with everything they need to create cutting-edge devices, from earbuds to hearing aids, at speed, and at the lowest BOM cost, giving them a competitive edge in the fast-evolving wireless audio market. We're particularly excited about this IP as the BLE 5.2 specification introduces LE audio, which is a significant step forward for Bluetooth audio, both in terms of sounds quality and functionality.

LE Audio, based on our new iEB110 IP, will enable manufacturers to create low power audio devices that offer several revolutionary new features that weren't possible before, even with third-party proprietary solutions. The big story in this new release was providing audio support over the Bluetooth Low Energy link for the first time. Described as one of the largest development efforts in the Bluetooth SIG history, not only does BLE now support audio, its new feature set will enable several uses cases that will transform the way we consume and share audio for many years to come.

At the heart of this is the new Low Complexity Communication Codec (LC3), which is now mandatory for all LE audio products and supports a wide range of sample rates, bit rates and frame rates giving product developers maximum flexibility to optimise their products to deliver the best possible audio experience to their end-users.

LC3 is much more efficient in processing and delivering audio than the SBC codec which is used in Bluetooth Classic and as you can see below offers much better audio quality in the real world.

The vertical scale in the chart below represents the audio impairment scale based on the ITU-R BS.1116-3 specification where 5 means the difference from the original source is undetectable, 4 represents a noticeable difference but not annoyingly so, and 3, a significant difference.

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