A new Bluetooth 6 LE SoC with Channel Sounding and CAN-FD
Plus: Bluetooth HDT reaches silicon and an Auracast pilot at a UK station
This Week in Bluetooth & UWB |
Aug 7, 2026 |
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In This Issue
→ Silicon Labs BG2B adds CAN-FD
→ Bluetooth HDT reaches silicon → Espressif module at about $2 → Auracast delivers translations → NXP UWB heads to BMW's fleet |
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New Post Four Bluetooth LE Advertising Decisions, Priced in Joules I measured what four everyday advertising choices actually cost, on an nRF54L15-DK powered through a Power Profiler Kit II at 1.8 V. Going from 0 dBm up to +8 dBm adds 15.86 µJ to every advertising event. Going down to −8 dBm instead returns only 3.99 µJ. Raising transmit power costs about four times what turning it back down gives you, and making an event scannable costs more than adding a new eight-byte field. That’s the question I’m building PowerScope to answer: where your power budget actually goes, event by event.
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Bluetooth LE
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CNX Software
Silicon Labs BG2B is an ultra-low-power Arm Cortex-M33 Bluetooth 6 LE SoC with support for Channel Sounding, “Secure Vault High” security, and integrated CAN-FD. The company claims it’s the lowest-power Bluetooth LE device in its portfolio, with 1.1 µA EM2 sleep current with RAM retention, as well as 14%-15% lower MCU active current and lower Bluetooth receive current compared to Silicon Labs’ previous lowest-power Bluetooth LE SoC. Silicon Labs says BG2B SoCs are currently available through an early customer engagement program, with initial production hardware planned for 2027.
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Ceva (PR Newswire)
On August 4, 2026, Ceva and Actions Technology announced the introduction of the Actions Technology ATS296X-series Bluetooth audio series of chips, powered by the Ceva-Waves Bluetooth High Data Throughput (HDT) platform. Ceva says the new family represents one of the industry’s earliest commercial implementations of Bluetooth HDT technology. The Bluetooth SIG says it is on track to adopt Bluetooth HDT in the upcoming Bluetooth Core Specification release, anticipated in late 2026. Increasing peak throughput from 2 Mbps to approximately 7.5 Mbps, HDT enables richer wireless experiences including lossless multi-channel audio, ultra-low latency gaming audio and significantly accelerated over-the-air software updates.
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CNX Software
Back in 2024, Espressif Systems introduced the ESP32-C61 2.4 GHz WiFi 6 and Bluetooth LE SoC as a low-cost variant of the ESP32-C6 without an 802.15.4 radio, a single RISC-V core, and lower-capacity SRAM (320KB vs 512KB). Espressif has now started to sell samples of the ESP32-C61-MINI-1 and ESP32-C61-MINI-1U on AliExpress for $10.7 for a pack of 5 pieces, or around $2 per module.
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Rail Business Daily
A new AI-powered passenger information system is now being publicly demonstrated at Bristol Temple Meads Railway Station. Thanks to the pilot, which was developed by XRAI and Ampetronic, passengers can now hear live station announcements translated into their own language. The trial is currently being delivered through the Station Innovation Zone programme, led by Connected Places Catapult in partnership with Network Rail. The solution combines artificial intelligence with Auracast (the latest generation of Bluetooth broadcast technology) to translate live public announcements and deliver them directly to passengers’ compatible personal listening devices.
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Ezurio
As a major release, Core Specification 6.0 was intended to set the framework for a new set of features and capabilities that would define the next generation of Bluetooth devices. One of the most noteworthy of these was the addition of Bluetooth Channel Sounding. In addition to a new PHY to support it (LE 2M 2BT), Channel Sounding introduced a platform-native solution to a long-standing use case: location and range sensing.
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Investing.com
Nordic Semiconductor presented its second-quarter 2026 results on August 6, reporting record revenue and expanding margins that exceeded Wall Street expectations. The company’s quarterly presentation revealed revenue of $219 million, surpassing analyst estimates of $212.93 million and marking a 33% year-over-year increase. Gross margin expanded to 53.1%, up from 50.7% a year earlier. Nordic says it holds a 31% share of Bluetooth LE end-product certifications over the last 12 months, three times higher than its closest competitor.
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Ultra-Wideband (UWB)
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NXP Semiconductors
On August 4, 2026, NXP Semiconductors announced that its Trimension NCJ29D6 family will be deployed in the BMW Group’s fleet, starting with selected 2026 vehicle programs. NXP says the Trimension NCJ29D6 is the first monolithic automotive UWB solution to combine secure fine-ranging and robust short-range radar capabilities, enabling important safety applications such as presence detection. BMW’s UWB-based Digital Key Plus replaces the traditional key fob with a smartphone or a smart watch. This allows drivers to securely unlock and lock the vehicle automatically and hands-free.
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Inside Unmanned Systems
Supported by the European Space Agency (ESA) NAVISP program, UK-based Omnisense has successfully completed the DroneHome-2 project. The result is a highly resilient, multi-sensor navigation architecture enabling reliable autonomous return-to-home and landing operations for drones operating in GNSS-degraded or denied environments. GNSS multipath and signal obstructions can threaten safety-critical landing phases when drones operate near marine vessels, offshore platforms, and industrial infrastructure. To maintain bounded, deterministic drone behavior, DroneHome-2 integrates a ground-based, ultra-wideband (UWB), local positioning system (LPS) with a high-performance flight navigation stack.
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P.S. Auracast being used for live translation at a train station, rather than just sharing audio, is not where I expected this to go next. If you have come across Auracast running in a public venue, I’d love to hear about it.
— Mohammad Afaneh
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