On January 28, 2019 the Bluetooth low energy Cordio Link and Cordio Stack solutions from Arm achieved day 1 qualification of the recently released Bluetooth Core v5.1 specification. The Cordio v5.1 Stack and Cordio v5.1 Link are available today to early access partners.

The latest 5.1 features continue to enhance Bluetooth low energy’s capabilities across a range of technologies and use cases, with a key focus on location services and enabling future audio over Bluetooth low energy. The qualified features include GATT Caching, Periodic Advertising Sync Transfer (PAST) w/ Control Length Extension, as well as the 5.1 ESR’s and Minor Feature Enhancements Batch 1. The Angle of Arrival (AoA) [host support only] feature of Cordio Stack combined with the Asset Tracking Profile (ATP) and Constant Tone Extension Service (CTES) enable enhanced location services over Bluetooth low energy targeting use cases that include Real Time Location Services (RTLS), item locator services, and point-of-interest information solutions. With GATT Caching Bluetooth low energy devices will see improved performance and shorter connection times in a variety of situations. PAST provides a mechanism for more efficient and direct synchronization to periodic advertisements to improve performance and reduce power consumption.

“The Bluetooth community continues to find ways to meet evolving market needs and open new opportunities,” said Mark Powell, Bluetooth SIG Executive Director. “The addition of Bluetooth direction finding demonstrates this commitment to drive innovation and support the incredible growth opportunity within the location services market.”

The Arm Cordio software supporting both controller and host firmware including Bluetooth Mesh is a production-ready, high-quality, rigorously tested and fully qualified software solution portable to any radio and platform. Furthermore, the Arm Cordio v5.0 Stack is available today as part of Mbed OS 5.11 and combined with the Pelion IoT Platform provides a transformative device-to-data platform for connected IoT. Cordio and Mbed together provide a complete tool set that includes reference designs, platform ports, service, profile and Mesh Model implementations, sample applications, optimization tools and more. Together Cordio, Mbed, and Pelion allow for quick and easy development, deployment and device management across verticals such as commercial building automation and lighting, asset tracking and logistics, home automation, health and wellness, consumer electronics, sports and fitness, medical, and more.