On November 4, 2022, the Starlink Alliance, which has been established for nearly two years, finally released its own communication standard - Starlink Wireless Short-Range Communication 1.0, which has two access modes: basic access and low-power access. Compared with all the current mainstream wireless protocols, Starlight's bandwidth has a huge upper and lower limit, which can reach 100kbps~12Mbps. The flexible channel design allows Starlight to run in very low power mode according to the actual needs of the device, improving the battery life or reducing the size of small wireless devices.
Unfortunately, as of the end of 2023, the number of consumer electronics products with Starlight technology available on the market is still quite limited. Search on the e-commerce platform with "Starlight" as the keyword, and in addition to Huawei's own M Pencil third-generation electronic products, there are only 3 gaming mice. Although this mouse has attracted a lot of attention to Huawei on Weibo with its outrageously long link distance, the current market performance shows that the influence of Huawei Starlight has always been limited.
Image source: Weibo
However, in 2024, Starlight has finally improved: on January 30, 2024, the famous audio brand FiiO announced that it will join the Starlight Alliance. On January 31, Shanling also announced that it would join the Starlight Alliance, and announced that it would be equipped with Starlight technology in "all Hi-Fi categories" products such as players, CD players, decoder headphone amplifiers, and streaming media amplifiers in the future. As the "New Year's gift" of the Starlight Alliance, the two major audio brands have successively sent "big gifts" to the Starlight Alliance, which is obviously good news for the Starlight Alliance, which has more than 300 members.
However, far water can't save near fire, and the Star Flash Alliance, which has just been launched, still needs the participation and support of more manufacturers.
The technology is too advanced, and the product has not kept up
In the announcement on Starlight technology, FiiO stated that it has always supported Chinese technical standards, and is also the first batch of supporting enterprises for a number of domestic technical standards in the past. However, at this stage, the resources of upstream chip companies on Starlight technology are still quite limited, "Normally, it will take until 2025 to have audio products using Starlight technology landed". Shanling's reply was more "long-term", directly indicating that the specific landing products and time are still difficult to estimate.
In other words, at least in 2024, Starlight will have to rely on gaming peripherals to support the scene.
Image source: JD.com
So why are the chips of Starlight technology so scarce, and what are the technical advantages of Starlight compared with traditional Bluetooth audio solutions?
If you have paid attention to the wireless headset market, you should know that in the field of Bluetooth audio, the difference between different protocols is only reflected in the coding logic of wireless transmission. Taking 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. Sony and other audio manufacturers are also developing their own wireless protocols, and protocols such as LHDC and LDAC are popular in recent years.
However, these protocols are all developed based on the Bluetooth specification, but use different encoding logic to further increase the bandwidth of the transmission.
Starlight, on the other hand, provides both SLE and SLB connection technology underneath, and uses the new Polar code for protocol compilation, which is far more efficient than the encoding system used by Bluetooth, achieving transmission performance infinitely close to the channel limit. The new technical background makes Starlink unable to directly "add bricks" to the original Bluetooth chip, but needs to design the chip from scratch, which also leads to the Starlight ecosystem taking longer to compete with the traditional Bluetooth audio ecosystem. Even Huawei mentioned in Starlight's note:
"None of the Huawei earbuds currently on the market support or upgrade to support the StarLink connection function, and cannot be paired and connected through the StarLight connection interface of the mobile phone. 」
But then again, can the more powerful Starlight really significantly improve the sound quality of high-end headphones?
With Starlight, how much can the headphones improve?
Technically, faster transmission technology is certainly a positive help in the transmission of wireless audio. Time complexity can be understood as a measure of the time it takes for a system to process and transmit a signal.
This includes the time required for the process of encoding, compressing, transmitting, decoding, etc. Time efficiency is critical in wireless audio transmission, especially for real-time or near-real-time audio communications such as phone calls or video conferencing, where any significant latency can impact the user experience. The goal of time complexity optimization is to reduce latency and ensure that audio signals can be transmitted and processed quickly and efficiently.
Spatial complexity is related to the amount of resources required to transmit or store an audio signal. This may include the bandwidth required to encode audio data, the memory space required to store buffered audio data, etc. In wireless audio transmission systems, optimizing spatial complexity means using bandwidth and storage resources more efficiently, for example, by reducing the size of the transmitted data by using more efficient encoding techniques, allowing more information to be transmitted within a given bandwidth, or reducing the need for storage resources.
Optimizing time and space complexity is important for wireless audio transmission systems, as they directly impact system performance, resource utilization, and user experience. For example, efficient encoding algorithms can reduce the size of audio data, which reduces the need for bandwidth (low spatial complexity), while also allowing for fast processing to minimize latency (low time complexity). These optimizations are critical to improving the overall efficiency and effectiveness of wireless audio transmission systems, especially in resource-constrained or high-real-time applications where high real-time performance is required.
Image source: Ray Technology
The faster Starlight technology can theoretically carry larger data packets, which means that Starlight can support faster transmission rates and lower transmission latency under the condition that the compression and encoding algorithms remain unchanged. In other words, without significantly increasing the transmission delay, Starlight can support larger packet sizes and reduce the compression ratio of packets, thereby reducing the impact of lossy compression algorithms on audio quality.
But these are only the impact of the transmission level on the audio file, in fact, the real decisive role in the listening experience of the headphones is never the transmission format, but the acoustic design of the headphones. Excellent acoustic design and psychological cues allow the user to feel some details that are lost due to lossy compression, such as information in the VLF (very low frequency) region.
Of course, the lower power consumption of StarFlash technology can effectively adapt to the battery space and battery life pressure of TWS earphones, allowing the sound driver to occupy a dominant position in the earphone design. But in the end, we have to let Starlight prove itself with products.
The automotive industry's demand for short-range wireless communication chips is increasing, and the requirements for technology are also rising, but the R&D and upgrading progress of old technologies is not fast enough. A more serious problem is that although domestic enterprises participate in technical standards such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and UWB, the core standards and protocols are still too dependent on overseas enterprises and institutions.
Image source: Ray Technology
Starlight is different, it is China's independent innovation technology, is a standard for Chinese to master the core technology, in which Huawei has contributed more than 30 years of experience and technology precipitation in the field of wireless communication to Starlight.
To some extent, Starlight's technical specifications are very close to the next-generation Bluetooth 7.0 being developed by the Bluetooth Alliance, but Starlight is now commercially available, while Bluetooth 6.0 is still in the testing stage. As a global electronics manufacturing center, Chinese enterprises have a lot of voice in the field of electronic digital, and will become the main force to promote Starlight in the future.
The development and application of this technology also indicates China's leading position in the field of global wireless communication technology in the future, which not only provides domestic consumers with a safer and more efficient technology choice, but also contributes Chinese wisdom and Chinese solutions to the diversified development of the global technology ecosystem. In this context, Xingxing is not only a shining technology, but also a bright symbol of China's scientific and technological progress.