Imagination and Packetcraft Announce Partnership for Low Energy Audio

By Tiera Oliver

Associate Editor

Embedded Computing Design

September 22, 2020

News

Imagination and Packetcraft Announce Partnership for Low Energy Audio

Combining IMG iEB110 hardware with Packetcraft Bluetooth host stack to deliver a complete Bluetooth Low Energy IP solution.

Imagination Technologies and Packetcraft announced a partnership to enable a complete Bluetooth Low Energy audio solution using the new Low Complexity Communication Codec (LC3). Combining Imagination's iEB110 hardware and Packetcraft's host stack, the solution is designed for applications such as broadcast audio, high quality multi-stream audio, and hearing aid support.
 
Imagination and Packetcraft have created a complete solution that can be integrated into a system-on-chip (SoC). According to the company, by using this integrated hardware and software solution, customers can benefit through reduced development time and time to market.
 
The newly announced LC3 codec brings ideal performance compared to Sub-Band Codec (SBC), which is used in Bluetooth Classic. According to the company, LC3 delivers ideal quality audio at only half the data rate, enabling it to bring reductions in power consumption without compromising on the audio quality.
 
Imagination's iEB110 is a complete Bluetooth Low Energy v5.2 solution, including RF, controller software, and Bluetooth Low Energy host stack. It supports advanced Bluetooth 5.1 features such as Angle of Arrival/Angle of Departure (AoA / AoD) allowing sub 1m location and tracking accuracy, Bluetooth v5.0 features such as LE long-range operation for extended indoor and outdoor coverage, and LE-2M PHY for higher throughput and reduced power consumption. With ideal RF performance, iEB110 delivers robust connectivity while extending the system battery life.
 
Packetcraft's Bluetooth 5.2 qualified host stack is an embedded software solution for Bluetooth low energy. It is designed to be efficient in memory, CPU, and power, and for portability to different CPUs, radios, and operating systems. Packetcraft's host stack supporting LE Audio is available today to its enterprise customers.

A demonstration of the solution is available here: https://imagination-technologies-cloudfront-assets.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/website-files/videos/bluetooth-low-energy-audio.mp4

For more information, visit: https://www.imgtec.com/communications/bluetooth/ieb110/#more

Tiera Oliver, Associate Editor for Embedded Computing Design, is responsible for web content edits, product news, and constructing stories. She also assists with newsletter updates as well as contributing and editing content for ECD podcasts and the ECD YouTube channel. Before working at ECD, Tiera graduated from Northern Arizona University where she received her B.S. in journalism and political science and worked as a news reporter for the university’s student led newspaper, The Lumberjack.

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