Bluetooth and ultra-wideband (UWB) short-range wireless technologies both rose to prominence at the turn of the century, and their development paths have been driven by the unrelenting need to reduce power consumption and extend battery life for an endless proliferation of wirelessly connected devices.
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) was ratified in 2006 to address the early power-consumption deficiencies of Bluetooth. More recently, Bluetooth 5.2 added features to reduce consumption for targeted applications like audio. However, these modifications are strictly incremental. Fundamentally, reductions in power consumption are physically limited by the Bluetooth architecture—a carrier-based transceiver will always require a significant amount of power to start, stabilize, and maintain its RF oscillator.