Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) And The Internet Of Things

IoT and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) are two technologies that enable a lot of interesting use cases. While the IoT is all about connecting the world, bluetooth le allows devices to communicate wirelessly.

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Article by: Adrian Dance
Technical & real world expert in all things IoT & smart home automation
Updated on: March 25, 2022

IoT and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) are two technologies that enable a lot of interesting use cases. While the IoT is all about connecting the world, bluetooth le allows devices to communicate wirelessly. However, there are certain considerations each technology brings along with it.

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) And The Internet Of Things

What is bluetooth le?

Bluetooth low energy (BLE) is a family of short-range wireless connectivity protocols from the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG). based on the Bluetooth 4.0 le specification.

Bluetooth le technology allows mobile devices and computers to establish peer-to-peer communication without requiring a physical connection to a power source. In contrast to classic Bluetooth, which requires establishing a connection to a power source before establishing a connection.

BLE relies heavily on the Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) technique, which means that bluetooth le device communicate by accessing a channel for a fixed amount of time. Whenever a BLE device wants to send a data packet, it wakes up the BLE radio, establishes a connection, and begins transmitting data.

Devices can communicate using BLE over distances of a few meters to a few tens of meters. BLE uses less energy than classic Bluetooth but does not provide the range or speed of classic Bluetooth.

Bluetooth le Applications

The BLE uses IoT devices that do not have a power source, such as sensors.

BLE can also be used to connect IoT devices to mobile devices. For example, it can be used by mobile apps to connect and control IoT devices. But it can be used in conjunction with another IoT communication protocol, such as Thread, Zigbee, Wi-Fi, or NFC.

Bluetooth le device can be battery-powered or powered by an external source.

Bluetooth Low Energy is suited to connecting low-power devices in IoT scenarios. This communication protocol is not well suited for connecting high-power devices, such as smartphones, to low-power devices.

BLE has a range of about 10 meters, which limits it for use in small and confined areas. However, BLE can be used to connect IoT devices in larger areas through mesh networking.

You can use BLE in a number of different ways, depending on your own needs.

Fitness Trackers

Fitness trackers use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology to track your health statistics. For example, RunKeeper uses BLE to keep tabs on your steps, distance covered, pace, calories burned, and more. If your fitness tracker uses BLE, you can pair it with your phone to track your progress.

Beacons

If you have an app that uses BLE, you can also pair it with your beacon. For example, if you own an e-commerce store, you can use BLE to provide product information to shoppers. These beacons can display various details about the products, such as their name, price, and review rating.

Medical Devices

Medical devices can use BLE to connect you to your doctor. For example, Medtronic uses BLE to send reminders to pacemaker wearers to take their medicine.

Bluetooth low energy for Smart Homes

The BLE-based devices, once incorporated into a smart home system, can monitor and control various home appliances, such as lighting, climate control, security, and entertainment.

Advantages of bluetooth le

The technology has the low power consumption advantage. Compared to Classic Bluetooth, Bluetooth low energy has a 15–40 percent lower power consumption.
It enables applications to work up to 10 times longer before recharging.
Also offers new features designed to make it secure, robust, and easy to use.
Features an enhanced security model. The devices may transmit data encrypted using 128-bit keys with AES-GCM.
Bluetooth low energy technology features 802.15.4-based mesh networking, which eliminates the need for a master-slave architecture.

Disadvantages of bluetooth le

Every technology has its disadvantages and BLE is no exception. The main ones are:

Low bandwidth – not suitable for large data transfer applications
Limited range (typically 1 -15 m, but steadily increasing with each iteration of the spec)
Requires a gateway device to connect the end devices to the Internet (smartphones, dedicated gateway devices)
Interference and noise from other protocols in the 2.4 GHz spectrum (WiFi, Bluetooth classic, ZigBee, etc)
Can be difficult to debug issues with communications especially relating to longer ranges and interference
A bit of a learning curve for newcomers to the technology

Final Thoughts

A lot of IoT projects are built around Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), a type of radio technology that’s used in everything from fitness trackers to smart locks.

BLE has a relatively simple design. It’s designed to be paired with low-energy devices (the other end), which use considerably less power than the devices sending data. The low-power nature of BLE makes it ideal for use in battery-powered devices.

The BLE radio protocol is relatively simple, and it’s used for more than just IoT. BLE radio chips also are widely used in home automation, which makes sense, since bluetooth le devices need to communicate with one another to coordinate things like turning off lights.

The BLE standard also makes it relatively simple to add support for other networks, such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth mesh. This allows devices to communicate with one another using whichever network is most convenient.

Adrian Dance

You might call me a techie or a technology enthusiast. I’m one of those people whose largely self-taught in the worlds of computing, technology and engineering. I have a DIY approach to the use of smart home automation and think that with the right advice, anyone can improve their lives through greater use of technology.

What is Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)? Everything You Need to Know

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is one of the most widely applicable low-power connectivity standards. In the rapidly evolving innovations in wireless technology, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) has emerged as a power-efficient solution for a variety of applications. In this blog post, we will discuss BLE i.e Bluetooth Low Energy, and will shed light on its capabilities and applications in the ever-evolving tech landscape.

What is Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) ?

BLE stands for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a power-conserving type of Classic Bluetooth. BLE is form of wireless communication, which primary application is short distance transmission of small amounts of data i.e low bandwidth. Unlike classic Bluetooth which is always in the ON state, BLE remains in sleep mode constantly except for when a connection is initiated. This makes it consume very low power. BLE consumes approximately 100x less power than Bluetooth which depends on your application.

Features of Bluetooth Low Energy

IoT Centric Design

BLE is designed with IoT application in mind. Features of Bluetooth low energy like Limited operational power, memory addresses the unique constrains of IoT devices. BLE allows IoT devices to operate for extended periods without frequent battery replacement or recharge.

Low Power Consumption

Low power duty and optimized data transmission mechanism of Bluetooth low energy enable it to operate on minimal power making it ideal for battery operated devices. BLE devices mostly remain in sleep mode and only wakes up to send or receive data, this makes it even energy conserving.

GATT

GATT, which stands for Generic Attribute Profile, is a framework used in Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for discovering services and characteristics on a device. GATT defines transfer of data back and forth using concepts called services and characteristics. Service is collection of data and associate behavior to complete particular function and characteristic is a value used in service along with properties and configuration information.

Fast Connection Setup

BLE can enable connection in milliseconds making it ideal for the applications that requires frequent but short and fast data transfer.

Security

AES-128 encryption feature of BLE allows protecting data transmitted between the devices and helps to establish trusted and secure connection.

Low Latency

BLE offers low latency communication, making it suitable for real time applications such as remote controls and gaming.

Device Roles and Asymmetry

In the context of BLE-equipped devices, it’s crucial to comprehend the architectural asymmetry which is present in the technology. Devices can have a central or peripheral role, like in a smartphone (central) and a smart band (peripheral).

To overcome the restriction of communication solely between a central and a peripheral device, some devices are configured to operate in both central and peripheral modes simultaneously. This dual-mode configuration is common in smartphones, they have the ability to function as both central and peripheral devices.

Difference Between Bluetooth Low Energy and Classic Bluetooth

Bluetooth Classic is designed for continuous, both way communication, whereas BLE transfers smaller packets of data over short periods of time;
Bluetooth Low Energy has much smaller energy consumption compared with Bluetooth classic
Bluetooth Classic is not so limited, it has a longer range and higher data throughout.

Bluetooth Basic Rate/Enhanced Data Rate (BR/EDR)

Short burst data transmission

2.4 GHz ISM Band (2.402 – 2.480 GHz Utilized)

40 channels with 2 MHz spacing (3 advertising channels/37 data channels)

79 channels with 1 MHz spacing

Frequency-Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS)

~0.01x to 0.5x of reference (depending on use case)

LE 2M PHY: 2 Mb/s LE 1M PHY: 1 Mb/s LE Coded PHY (S=2): 500 Kb/s LE Coded PHY (S=8): 125 Kb/s

EDR PHY (8DPSK): 3 Mb/s EDR PHY (π/4 DQPSK): 2 Mb/s BR PHY (GFSK): 1 Mb/s

Class 1: 100 mW (+20 dBm) Class 1.5: 10 mW (+10 dBm) Class 2: 2.5 mW (+4 dBm) Class 3: 1 mW (0 dBm)

Class 1: 100 mW (+20 dBm) Class 2: 2.5 mW (+4 dBm) Class 3: 1 mW (0 dBm)

Point-to-Point (including piconet) Broadcast Mesh

https://theiotpad.com/bluetooth-low-energy-and-internet-of-things/

https://www.campuscomponent.com/blogs/post/what-is-ble-bluetooth-low-energy-explained