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WL183x: BT and BLE - can they operate simultaneously?

Team, 

My customer has a question:

I know that W1837 BT supports A2DP and AVRCP.  And the BLE  4.2 and higher supports bonding (i.e.) linking to multiple devices instead of just pairing.  Our customer wants a solution that supports bonding and has an A2DP and AVRCP profile.  So my question specifically is does TI have a way that we can be operating under BLE 4.2 with bonding and then switch to BT.  The real problem we have here is that they want to dock a third party device that will be streaming music, to multiple points using the 4.2 bonding capability.  But we need to be able to configure data using the AVRCP profile as well accept data from this device from other native apps running on it. 

What we are really asking is do you have a way to do this or are there some alternative profiles in BLE that support or  replace A2DP and AVRCP?  This is kind of an exploratory question since we know that BT has one side of what namely A2DP and AVRCP we need and BLE has another bonding to multiple devices.  But please correct me if I am wrong, we can’t operate under both modes simultaneously and even if we could the devices (which are undefined at this time probably don’t).  I suspect that we will may need to develop an app that does what we want unless TI has a means for accomplishing this using BLE.

 Thanks

Viktorija

  • hi, your query has been assigned to WiLink 8 expert. We will get back to you shortly
    Saurabh
  • Hi Team -

    Can someone please take a look at this question?

    Thank you,

    Dan

  • Hi Viktorija, Daniel,

    The Bluetooth subsystem inside the WL183x has dual mode Bluetooth functionality. So, we can operate BT and BLE (incl. Pairing, connecting, scanning etc) simultaneously. So having an active A2DP+AVRCP will not affect the controller's ability to pair and connect with another BLE device.

    Because of the low throughput on the BLE, there is no real equivalent BLE solution to replace A2DP at this moment. But, the dual mode capabilities of the WL183x allow us to operate in both modes simultaneously as mentioned above.

    Can you please clarify the "linking/connecting to multiple devices in BLE" scenario? There is a limitation of the Link Layer topology feature that limits the WL18xx's ability to be a BLE central(master) and BLE peripheral(slave) to multiple devices at the same time or to be a BLE peripheral(slave) to multiple devices at the same time. If you can provide some more details about the complete topology, it would be really helpful. If you'd like, we can discuss this further on a call.

    Best regards,
    Vihang

  • Hello,

    I am answering for our group at Medallion who posed the question.  We are just starting on BLE and was not sure if the dual mode device could support both simultaneously.  This is very good news thanks for the help.  You guys are great.

    Best Regards,

    jack Thiesen