Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a recently developed energy-efficient short-range radio communication technology, which is nowadays vastly becoming more and more popular. The technology aims to provide an energy-efficient low-cost wireless communication mechanism for a wide range of resource-limited consumer electronic devices and applications. In this paper we focus on the networking aspects of the technology. First, we overview fundamentals of BLE communication technology, discuss its capabilities and limitations, and compare BLE with state-of-the-art technologies. Furthermore, we identify and discuss two scenarios, for which standard BLE communication mechanisms show poor performance and propose two mechanisms capable of improving throughput and energy efficiency of BLE communication in multi node environment. The efficiency of the proposed mechanisms is proved via network level simulations, which are executed using the developed BLE simulation tool. The results of the simulations are reported and discussed. We believe that the presented results might be of some interest not only for academic researchers but also for practicing engineers.

Keywords

Bluetooth Low Energy Bluetooth Smart network multi node throughput energy improvement wireless

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

[1]

Ahmadian and

Lampe, Performance analysis of the IEEE 802.15.4a UWB system, IEEE Trans. Commun. 57 (2009), 1474–1485.

[2]

Allen

et al., Evaluation of fall risk for post-stroke patients using Bluetooth Low-Energy wireless sensor, in: Proc. IEEE Global Commun. Conf., Atlanta, GA, USA, 2013, pp. 2598–2603.

[3]Bluetooth SIG, Bluetooth specification version 4, Kirkland, WA, USA, 2010.

[4]

Castiglione,

De Santis,

Castiglione,

Palmieri and

Fiore, An energy-aware framework for reliable and secure end-to-end ubiquitous data communications, in: Proc. 5th Int. Conf. Intelligent Networking and Collaborative Systems, Xi’an, China, 2013, pp. 157–165.

[5]

Castiglione,

Palmieri,

Fiore,

Castiglione and

De Santisa, Modeling energy-efficient secure communications in multi-mode wireless mobile devices, J. Comput. Syst. Sci. (2015), to appear.

[6]

Craven,

Glavin,

Kilmartin and

Jones, Potential for extended battery life in mobile healthcare with Bluetooth Low Energy and signal compression, in: Proc. IET Irish Signals Syst. Conf., Maynooth, Ireland, 2012, pp. 1–6.

[7]

De Nardis and

M.-G.

Di Benedetto, Overview of the IEEE 802.15.4/4a standards for low data rate wireless personal data networks, in: Proc. 4th Workshop Positioning Navigation Communication, Hannover, Germany, 2007, pp. 285–289.

[8]

Dementyev,

Hodges,

Taylor and

Smith, Power consumption analysis of Bluetooth Low Energy, ZigBee and ANT sensor nodes in a cyclic sleep scenario, in: Proc. 2013 IEEE Int. Wireless Symp., Beijing, China, 2013, pp. 1–4.

[9]

Ferro and

Potorti, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless protocols: A survey and a comparison, IEEE Wireless Commun. 12 (2005), 12–16.

10.

[10]

Fornazier,

Martin and

Messner, Wireless Communication: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 2012, IEEE 802.15.4, DASH7, available at: http://rose.eu.org/2012/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Wireless-communication.pdf.

11.

[11]

Frank,

Bronzi,

Castignani and

Engel, Bluetooth Low Energy: An alternative technology for VANET applications, in: Proc. 11th Annu. Conf. Wireless On-Demand Netw. Syst. Services, Obergurgl, Austria, 2014, pp. 104–107.

12.

[12]

Galinina,

Mikhaylov,

Andreev,

Turlikov and

Koucheryavy, Smart home gateway system over Bluetooth Low Energy with wireless energy transfer capability, EURASIP J. Wireless Commun. Networking 2015 (2015), 178.

13.

[13]

Gomez,

Demirkol and

Paradells, Modeling the maximum throughput of Bluetooth Low Energy in an error-prone link, IEEE Commun. Lett. 15 (2011), 1187–1189.

14.

[14]

Gomez,

Oller and

Paradells, Overview and evaluation of Bluetooth Low Energy: An emerging low-power wireless technology, Sensors 12 (2012), 11734–11753.

15.

[15]

Haroon,

K.M.

Ahmed and

Rasheed, An adaption of IEEE 802.15.4a in an industrial field bus, in: Proc. 8th IEEE Int. Conf. Industrial Informatics, Osaka, Japan, 2010, pp. 531–536.

16.

[16]

Heydon, Bluetooth Low Energy: The Developer’s Handbook, Prentice Hall PTR, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2012.

17.

[17]ISO/IEC, Parameters for active air interface communications at 433 MHz, 2004.

18.

[18]ISO/IEC, Wireless Short-Packet (WSP) protocol optimized for energy harvesting – Architecture and lower layer protocols, 2011.

19.

[19]ITU, Short range narrow-band digital radiocommunication transceivers – PHY and MAC layer specifications, 2012.

20.

[20]

Kandhalu,

A.E.

Xhafa and

Hosur, Towards bounded-latency Bluetooth Low Energy for in-vehicle network cable replacement, in: Proc. Int. Conf. Connected Vehicles Expo, Las Vegas, NV, USA, 2013, pp. 635–640.

21.

[21]

Karapistoli,

F.-N.

Pavlidou,

Gragopoulos and

Tsetsinas, An overview of the IEEE 802.15.4a standard, IEEE Commun. Mag. 48 (2010), 47–53.

22.

[22]

Kun,

Xinyue and

Nan, Design of vehicle control system based on Bluetooth Low Energy smartphone platform, in: Proc. Int. Conf. Electrical Machines Syst., Busan, ROK, 2013, pp. 1498–1501.

23.

[23]

Kwak,

Ullah and

Ullah, An overview of IEEE 802.15.6 standard, in: Proc. 3rd Int. Symp. Applied Sciences Biomedical Commun. Tech., Rome, Italy, 2010, pp. 1–6.

24.

[24]

Lee,

Canfeng and

Yan, Modeling neighbor discovery in Bluetooth Low Energy networks, IEEE Commun. Lett. 16 (2012), 1439–1441.

25.

[25]

Lee,

Canfeng,

Yan and

Xu, Adaptive device discovery in Bluetooth Low Energy networks, in: Proc. IEEE 77th Vehicular Technology Conf., Dresden, Germany, 2013, pp. 1–5.

26.

[26]

Lee,

Canfeng,

Yan and

Xu, Energy analysis of device discovery for Bluetooth Low Energy, in: Proc. IEEE 78th Vehicular Technology Conf., Las Vegas, NV, USA, 2013, pp. 1–5.

27.

[27]

J.-S.

Lee,

Y.-W.

Su and

C.-C.

Shen, A comparative study of wireless protocols: Bluetooth, UWB, ZigBee, and Wi-Fi, in: Proc. 33rd Annu. Conf. IEEE Industrial Electron Society, Taipei, Taiwan, 2007, pp. 46–51.

28.

[28]

Z.-M.

Lin,

C.-H.

Chang,

N.-K.

Chou and

Y.-H.

Lin, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) based blood pressure, in: Proc. Int. Conf. Intelligent Green Building Smart Grid, Taipei, Taiwan, 2014, pp. 1–4.

29.

[29]

Luan,

Gude,

Prakash and

Warren, A paraeducator glove for counting disabled-child behaviors that incorporates a Bluetooth Low Energy wireless link to a smart phone, in: Proc. 36th Annu. Int. Conf. IEEE Eng. Medicine Biology Soc., Chicago, IL, USA, 2014, pp. 796–799.

30.

[30]

B.K.

Maharjan,

Witkowski and

Zandian, Tree network based on Bluetooth 4.0 for wireless sensor network applications, in: Proc. 6th European Embedded Design Education Research Conf., 2014.

31.

[31]

Masuch and

Delgado-Restituto, A 190-microWatt zero-IF GFSK demodulator with a 4-b phase-domain ADC, IEEE J. Solid-St. Circ. 47 (2012), 2796–2806.

32.

[32]

Mikhaylov, Accelerated Connection Establishment (ACE) mechanism for Bluetooth Low Energy, in: Proc. IEEE 25th Annu. Int. Symp. Personal Indoor Mobile Radio Commun., Washington, DC, USA, 2014, pp. 1264–1268.

33.

[33]

Mikhaylov, Simulation of network-level performance for Bluetooth Low Energy, in: Proc. IEEE 25th Annu. Int. Symp. Personal Indoor Mobile Radio Commun., Washington, DC, USA, 2014, pp. 1259–1263.

34.

[34]

Mikhaylov,

Plevritakis and

Tervonen, Performance analysis and comparison of Bluetooth Low Energy with IEEE 802.15.4 and SimpliciTI, J. Sens. Actuator Networks 2 (2013), 589–613.

35.

[35]

Mikhaylov and

Tervonen, Multihop data transfer service for Bluetooth Low Energy, in: Proc. 13th Int. Conf. ITS Telecommunications, Tampere, Finland, 2013, pp. 319–324.

36.

[36]

Mikhaylov and

Tervonen, Analysis and evaluation of the maximum throughput for data streaming over IEEE 802.15.4 wireless networks, J. High Speed Networks 19 (2013), 181–202.

37.

[37]

Nieminen

et al., Networking solutions for connecting Bluetooth Low Energy enabled machines to the Internet of things, IEEE Network 28 (2014), 83–90.

38.

[38]

Nieminen,

Savolainen,

Isomaki,

Shelby and

Gomez, Transmission of IPv6 packets over Bluetooth Low Energy, draft-ietf-6lowpan-btle-12, 2013.

39.

[39]

Park, Proposed specification framework for TGah, 2012.

40.

[40]

Park and

Cho, Transmission of ECG data with the patch-type ECG sensor system using Bluetooth Low Energy, in: Proc. Int. Conf. ICT Convergence, Jeju, ROK, 2013, pp. 289–294.

41.

[41]

Qiao,

Gao and

Wang, The design of electronic thermometer based on Bluetooth Low Energy, in: Proc. 4th Int. Conf. Electron. Inf. Emergency Commun., Beijing, China, 2013, pp. 252–254.

42.

[42]

H.J.

Rivertz, Bluetooth security, DART/05/05, 2005.

43.

[43]

Ryan, Bluetooth: With low energy comes low security, in: Proc. 7th USENIX Workshop Offensive Techn., Washington, DC, USA, 2013, pp. 1–7.

44.

[44]

Seek Cho,

Kwon,

Choi and

D.-H.

Park, Development of smart LED lighting system using multi-sensor module and Bluetooth Low Energy technology, in: Proc. 11th Annu. IEEE Int. Conf. Sensing, Communication, and Networking (SECON), Singapore, 2014, pp. 191–193.

45.

[45]

Siekkinen,

Hiienkari,

J.K.

Nurminen and

Nieminen, How low energy is Bluetooth Low Energy? Comparative measurements with ZigBee/802.15.4, in: Proc. IEEE Wireless Commun. and Networking Conf. Workshops, Paris, France, 2012, pp. 232–237.

46.

[46]

Strey,

Richman,

Rozensky,

Smith and

Endee, Bluetooth Low Energy technologies for applications in health care: Proximity and physiological signals monitors, in: Proc. 10th Int. Conf. Expo Emerging Technologies Smarter World, Melville, NY, USA, 2013, pp. 1–4.

47.

[47]

Ullah,

M.S.

Chowdhury,

Khan and

K.S.

Kwak, Throughput limits of UWB based 802.15.4a, in: Proc. Int. Conf. Inf. Commun. Tech. Convergence, Jeju, ROK, 2010, pp. 166–167.

48.

[48]

Wang,

Xi,

Liu and

Chen, Transmitting IPv6 packets over Bluetooth Low Energy based on BlueZ, in: Proc. 15th Int. Conf. Adv. Commun. Technol., Pyeongchang, ROK, 2013, pp. 72–77.

49.

[49]

Wong

et al., A 1 v 5 mA multimode IEEE 802.15.6 / Bluetooth Low-Energy WBAN transceiver, in: Proc. IEEE Int. Solid-State Circ. Conf., San Francisco, CA, USA, 2012, pp. 300–302.

50.

[50]

Yu,

Xu and

Li, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) based mobile electrocardiogram monitoring system, in: Proc. Int. Conf. Inf. and Automation, Shenyang, China, 2012, pp. 763–767.

51.

[51]

Zhang,

Xia and

Shen, Bluetooth Low Energy based motion sensing system, in: Proc. 6th Int. Conf. Wireless Commun. Signal Processing, Hefei, China, 2014, pp. 1–5.

52.

[52]

Zhang,

Atac,

Liao and

Heinen, A low-power high-efficiency demodulator in Bluetooth Low Energy receiver, in: Proc. 8th Conf. Ph. D. Research Microelectronics Electronics, Aachen, Germany, 2012, pp. 1–4.

53.

[53]

Zhao and

J.B.

Laflen, Gesture recognition with low quality signal over Low Energy Bluetooth 4.0, in: Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Consumer Electron., Las Vegas, NV, USA, 2014, pp. 294–295.

54.

[54]

Zhou

et al., A Bluetooth Low Energy approach for monitoring electrocardiography and respiration, in: Proc. IEEE 15th Int. Conf. Health Networking, Applications and Services, Lisbon, Portugal, 2013, pp. 130–134.

55.

[55]

Zidek and

Pitel, Smart 3D pointing device based on MEMS sensor and Bluetooth Low Energy, in: Proc. IEEE Symp. Computational Intelligence Control Automation, Singapore, 2013, pp. 207–211.

Mechanisms for improving throughput and energy efficiency of Bluetooth Low Energy for multi node environment

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References