At a press conference some time ago, Huawei officially released a new generation of wireless connection technology - NearLink. Unlike previous wireless technologies, NearLink is not developed based on the specifications of traditional wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, but is a new wireless connection specification created by Huawei based on years of accumulation of wireless technology.
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If you didn’t watch the press conference, it doesn’t matter. Let’s take a quick look at StarLight: it uses a set of standards to combine the advantages of traditional wireless technologies such as Bluetooth and WIFI. This technology is suitable for consumer electronics, smart homes, new energy vehicles, industrial smart manufacturing and other scenarios.Compared with Bluetooth technology, the power consumption is reduced by 60%, the transmission rate is increased by 6 times, it has lower latency, more stable connection and anti-interference ability, the coverage distance is increased by 2 times, and the number of connections is increased by 10 times.
The above is the official explanation. From a technical point of view, the upper limit of each parameter of Star Flash is much higher than the current mainstream Bluetooth 5.3 protocol. Moreover, StarLight technology itself is compatible with a variety of wireless connection protocols, and the use of enhanced devices such as receivers can further improve latency and stability.
The wireless revolution is here
In recent years, wireless technology has become the main development direction of peripherals. From mice to keyboards, from headphones to speakers, wireless has become the main selling point of many new products. People are finding ways to get rid of the shackles of cables and make their experience more free.
The surge in demand for wireless peripherals has also allowed the development of wireless technology to move forward rapidly. The miniaturization, low power consumption and high speed of wireless protocols such as Bluetooth to 2.4G are giving us a better wireless connection experience. Take Qualcomm as an example. Its Snapdragon processor supports the proprietary Bluetooth transmission protocol, which can transmit data at a higher rate and stability, and easily complete the transmission of lossless music on wireless devices such as headphones.
In addition, audio manufacturers such as Sony are also developing their own wireless protocols. Protocols such as LHDC and LDAC have become popular in recent years.However, these protocols are all developed based on the Bluetooth specification, but use different coding logic to further increase the transmission bandwidth.
Starlight is different. It provides the bottom layer of two connection technologies, SLE and SLB, and uses a new Polar code for protocol compilation. This new encoding system is far more efficient than the encoding system used by Bluetooth, achieving transmission performance infinitely close to the channel limit.
Source: Star Flash
The technical indicators of Star Flash are also very exaggerated.The delay is less than 20 microseconds (the current mainstream wireless technology delay is generally a minimum of 1 millisecond, which is 50 times that of star flash), the multi-point synchronization accuracy is less than 1 microsecond, the reliability is greater than 99.999% (under 20dB random burst interference), and the single-stream peak spectral efficiency is greater than 5bps/Hz.
Behind the amazing technical indicators, the core is a complete reconstruction of wireless technology. Compared with traditional Bluetooth technology, StarLight is more like a variant of 5G technology. It has many 5G characteristics, but it has been greatly simplified. You can think of it as a specialized 5G technology, and it also incorporates some Wi-Fi technology into it.
Comparing all current mainstream wireless protocols, even the latest Apple enhanced Bluetooth patent is lower than Star Flash in terms of bandwidth, latency, etc., and is based on two different wireless bottom layers.StarLight has a very large upper and lower bandwidth limit, which can reach 100kbps~12Mbps. For comparison, Apple's is 1Mbps~8Mbps. The flexible channel design allows StarLight to run at very low power according to the needs of the device, improving the battery life or reducing the size of small wireless devices.
It can be said that StarLight has all our current requirements for wireless technology, such as low power consumption, low latency, high bandwidth, etc. In my opinion, StarLight Ecosystem has the opportunity to become the Chinese version of 3GPP or IEEE Alliance, allowing us to gain more say in the understanding of wireless communications.
What is the current market performance of StarLight Technology?
Starlight’s commercial prospects
In a short period of time after the release of StarLight, three peripherals equipped with StarLight technology have been launched in China, namely Thor, VGN and Damosha. They are all emerging forces in the field of peripherals. Their products are mainly targeted at professional gamers and have extremely high performance requirements.
In their promotional page, we can also more intuitively see the current performance of StarLight technology on actual products. Taking Raytheon's products as an example, the technical parameters given are more than 2 times the anti-interference ability, the wireless mode delay is as low as 250 microseconds, and the wired mode is as low as 125 microseconds. The wireless mode supports a 4KHz polling rate, and the wired mode supports an 8KHz polling rate.
Source: JD.com
What are these parameters? To put it simply, it is equivalent to directly making the product performance indicators of these emerging peripheral brands equal to the top products of the world's first-class peripheral manufacturers. Among the current mainstream peripheral brands, Razer has made the fastest progress in wireless technology. The new generation Viper v3 Professional Edition also supports up to 4KHz wireless mode and does not support 8KHz wired mode. Moreover, the 4KHz mode requires the purchase of an independent adapter base. In contrast, mice from brands such as Thor that use StarLight technology only require a Nano receiver.
A higher polling rate can make the positioning of the mouse more detailed and accurate during operation, maximizing player skills. Mouse with a high polling rate has always been the favorite of professional players. Before this, top peripherals have always been reserved for big international brands such as Logitech, but after the release of StarLight, this market may undergo some changes.
The trial in the mouse market is just the beginning. The advantages of Starlight technology in the audio and video field are actually more significant. Compared with peripherals such as mice and keyboards, headphones need to transmit far more data in one second than ordinary peripherals, so the advantages of high bandwidth will be more obvious.Even mini wireless earphones like TWS earphones use StarLight technology to achieve a real-time 1.5Mbps transmission rate without the need for additional adapters, while having extremely low latency.
Source: Huawei
As the quality of streaming music becomes higher and higher (QQ Music and others can already provide mastering-level sound quality), higher requirements are placed on the transmission bandwidth of headphones. Only high-bandwidth wireless protocols can meet the transmission of high-quality music and bring users a better music experience.
Moreover, using StarLight technology, you can easily build an ultra-low-latency wireless sound system, solving the current problems of difficulty in building mid-to-low-end wireless home theaters, weak anti-interference ability, and high latency. If it is just the upgrade of the audio system, the revolution brought by it is secondary. The biggest change is actually in the field of wireless screen projection.
Current wireless screen projection technology, except for a few point-to-point millimeter wave screen projections, most other types of screen projection have obvious delays and poor anti-interference capabilities. Taking advantage of the high transmission rate of starlight technology, remote screen projection with 4K resolution can be easily completed, and the anti-interference performance is significantly better than traditional WiFi screen projection.
To some extent, the technical specifications of Star Flash are very close to the next generation Bluetooth 7.0 being developed by the Bluetooth Alliance, but Star Flash is now commercially available, while Bluetooth 6.0 is still in the testing stage. More than 100 domestic companies have joined the StarLight Alliance. As a global electronics manufacturing center, Chinese companies have a large say in the electronic digital field and will become the main force in promoting StarLight in the future.
Source: Star Flash