Recently, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) announced a direction-finding feature that can significantly enhance the performance of Bluetooth-based location services products. The feature lets devices determine the direction of a Bluetooth signal, thereby enabling the development of Bluetooth proximity solutions that can understand device direction. Hence, positioning systems can achieve location accuracy down to a matter of centimeters.

Bluetooth location services solutions generally fall into two categories, proximity solutions and positioning systems. Today, proximity solutions use Bluetooth to understand when two devices are near each other, and approximately how far apart. By including the direction-finding feature, Bluetooth proximity solutions can add a device-direction capability. Positioning systems use Bluetooth to determine the physical location of devices and include real-time locating systems (RTLS).

The direction finding feature is included in version 5.1 of the Bluetooth Core Specification, which is now available to developers. In addition, Launch Studio, the Bluetooth SIG tool used to qualify new Bluetooth products, has been updated to support this feature.