A little over a millennia ago, in 979 AD, Harald Gormsson ordered numerous public works, helping him consolidate economic and military control of Scandinavia. From the reconstruction of the Jelling runic stones to building the oldest known bridge in southern Scandinavia, this ancient ruler overcame significant challenges, coalescing what was then a deeply fragmented society. King Gormsson, known as Bluetooth, "won the whole of Denmark and Norway" by uniting the warring Scandinavian tribes.
In the late 1990s, the king’s achievement in uniting disparate elements would be celebrated by a new wireless technology being developed to unite different communication protocols (such as those for PCs and cellular phones) into a single, universal standard. The name "Bluetooth" was suggested as a temporary codename by Jim Kardach of Intel, who was reading a historical novel about Vikings at the time. The idea resonated and the name stuck. It even inspired the Bluetooth logo, a bind rune combining the Elder Futhark runes for Harald's initials, H (ᚼ) and B (ᛒ).
While Gormsson provided the symbolic namesake for Bluetooth, the technological core enabling its robust wireless communication owes a significant debt to an unexpected innovator: Hollywood film star Hedy Lamarr. Roughly 80 years ago, during World War II, Lamarr co-invented a communication system that introduced a groundbreaking concept critical to modern wireless technologies.
Lamarr’s innovative idea was a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes that utilized spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology. The core concept was to rapidly switch radio frequencies during transmission, making it extremely difficult for enemies to jam the signal or predict the next frequency. Bluetooth employs Adaptive Frequency Hopping (AFH), a spread spectrum technique of frequency hopping based on Lamarr’s creation.
Ubiquitous and Advanced
A quarter century after its introduction, we find 4.7 billion Bluetooth integrated circuit chips being shipped annually. A market report from May indicates that shipments of Bluetooth devices could exceed 5.3 billion units in 2025 and approach 8 billion by 2029.
Bluetooth is the most ubiquitous and pervasive wireless connection technology in the world. So why isn’t Bluetooth the hottest topic in commercial AV?
It may be because many AV professionals are not fully aware of the significant advancements in Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Auracast, Periodic Advertising with Responses (PAwR), and Direction Finding. They associate "Bluetooth" with older consumer experiences, not the robust, scalable, and precise capabilities now emerging.
AV training and curriculum rarely offer any Bluetooth instruction, contributing to the knowledge gap. It’s time for us to take a much closer look at BT in AV.
Bluetooth uses 79 channels (40 channels for BLE) in a pseudo-random hopping sequence, making it exceptionally difficult for unintended parties to intercept or jam the signal. Plus, advanced Bluetooth devices can classify channels as "used" or "unused" based on interference, dynamically adjusting the hopping pattern to avoid noise and improve overall performance. Add in encrypted payloads and we see that Bluetooth is a very secure system.
BLE allows for a host of new, interesting, and AV-centric applications. It’s specifically designed for ultra-low power consumption while maintaining a surprising communication range (more than 300 feet in free space). It’s designed to stay in a "sleep" mode most of the time and only "wake up" to transmit small bursts of data when needed. This allows devices to operate for months or even years on small coin-cell batteries. While they share the "Bluetooth" name and operate in the same 2.4 GHz ISM radio frequency band, BLE and Classic Bluetooth are different protocols, with modern devices typically being dual mode.
Some of the new BLE capabilities are astonishing. Imagine if your Bluetooth device didn't just know that another device was nearby, but also exactly where it was. That's essentially what Bluetooth's Angle of Departure (AoD) and Angle of Arrival (AoA) features are all about. These new capabilities allow devices to figure out the relative location and travel direction of other Bluetooth LE radios. Think of it as giving Bluetooth devices a sense of spatial awareness, allowing it to become a powerful tool for asset tracking or indoor wayfinding.
Real World Applications
PAwR is a game-changer for applications requiring high-volume, ultra-low power communication with numerous devices. A prime example of its use is Electronic Shelf Labels (ESL) for retail applications.
Bluetooth, once a silent workhorse, is poised to redefine the commercial AV landscape.
Imagine a large supermarket where thousands of digital price tags need to be updated frequently and reliably, yet consume minimal power to ensure long battery life. Before PAwR, there was no standard for secure, connectionless communication for such scenarios. PAwR enables encrypted bi-directional communication between a central hub and thousands of ESL devices while remaining synchronized and consuming very little power. This significantly enhances the efficiency and security of managing vast networks of IoT devices in retail and other similar environments.
Auracast is a groundbreaking new feature of BLE Audio that introduces a one-to-many audio broadcast capability. An Auracast transmitter broadcasts one or more audio streams, along with advertising information (metadata) that describes the available streams. An Auracast receiver such as hearing aids, earbuds, or headphones picks up the digital stream and converts it into audio, while an optional Auracast Assistant device (often a smartphone or smartwatch) helps users discover, select, and manage the broadcasts. And yes, the audio stream can be encrypted for security.
Unlike older assisted listening systems, Auracast delivers flexible, high-quality, and universal one-to-many audio broadcasts to an unlimited number of compatible Bluetooth audio receivers simultaneously. Compared to the coverage limitations, interference susceptibility, and reliance on specific hardware inherent in older ring-type systems like hearing loops, Auracast and Bluetooth LE Audio offer improved audio quality, lower latency, and better power efficiency.
ABI Research estimates that more than 60 million venues worldwide could potentially benefit from Auracast, and the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) anticipates mass adoption to accelerate as major smartphone platforms fully support it at the operating system level, support that is rolling out now and is only expected to grow.
[Viewpoint: Make Room for 'Digital Electricity']
Bringing together its historical ingenuity with its modern marvels, Bluetooth, once a silent workhorse, is poised to redefine the commercial AV landscape. Its evolution from simple device pairing to sophisticated capabilities like Auracast's unlimited broadcast audio, precise Direction Finding for spatial awareness, and PAwR's efficient large-scale communication, transforms it into an indispensable and secure tool. The time has come for AV professionals to look beyond outdated perceptions and embrace Bluetooth's powerful, ubiquitous, and quietly revolutionary role in shaping the future of integrated systems.