Apple Audio Patent: Low-latency optical/RF solution that can be adapted to AR/VR headsets

On January 26, the USPTO published an audio patent related to Apple's AR/VR headset, which points to an optical audio transmission scheme from source devices such as AR/VR headsets to wireless headphones, in which the audio source device will be equipped with an optical transmitter to transmit audio data as optical signals and radio frequency/radio frequency (RF), and then wireless headphones can receive optical and RF signals, and convert these signals into outputible audio through speakers.

To put it simply, it is often found that the Bluetooth headsets on the market have subtle delays when listening to songs and watching videos, especially in scenarios with high requirements for sound synchronization such as games and video clips, the data transmission speed of Bluetooth headsets is not as good as that of wired headphones. To solve this problem, Apple has developed such a low-latency optical and radio audio transmission scheme.

According to Qingting.com, the wireless audio transmission technology described in the patent can be used with Apple AR/VR headsets or mobile phones, and the headphones are connected to the headset and mobile phone through the WPAN wireless personal area network. Compared with the existing Bluetooth transmission technology, the solution in Apple's patent is designed to solve the end-to-end delay problem of wireless signal transmission, unlike the Bluetooth wireless protocol, the audio data transmitted through the optical signal can be transmitted as raw digital data, eliminating the process of encoding and packaging audio data.

Apple said that after reducing the delay, wireless headphones can quickly generate feedback on the source device, and can output audio in almost real time.