{"id":6969,"date":"2026-02-20T10:29:25","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T09:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pschatzmann.ch\/home\/?p=6969"},"modified":"2026-02-20T14:20:56","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T13:20:56","slug":"ieee-802-15-4-and-audio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pschatzmann.ch\/home\/2026\/02\/20\/ieee-802-15-4-and-audio\/","title":{"rendered":"IEEE 802.15.4: Audio and Other Uses"},"content":{"rendered":"

IEEE 802.15.4<\/strong> is a technical standard defining the Physical and Media Access Control layers for Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks<\/strong>. It enables low-power, low-data-rate wireless connectivity for IoT, smart home, and industrial sensors, allowing devices to operate on batteries for years. Here in Europe it uses the Primary Sub-GHz Band:<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>868.0\u2013868.6 MHz.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is used e.g. by the smart home protocols<\/span> Thread\/Matter and Zigbee<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

These smart home protocols are suited to control audio<\/strong>, but they are too slow to transmit the audio data directly. So I was wondering if we can use the IEEE 802.15.4 layer directly to transmit audio.<\/p>\n

Some ESP32 microcontrollers variants (e.g. the C6) provide access to IEEE 802.15.4. Therefore<\/span> I published an IEEE 802.15.4 Arduino Library<\/a> for sending and receiving data in an easy way e.g. using Arduino Streams.<\/p>\n

There, I was measuring<\/strong> a maximum thruput of 23100 bytes\/second<\/strong>. This is 185 kbps<\/strong> which gives quite a few options for audio:<\/p>\n

For music under 185 kbps:<\/strong><\/p>\n