Comparison of CRC and Convolutional Coding in BLE

Abstract

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technology are commonly used in many areas, including smart phones, smart wearable devices, and Internet of Things (IoT). These technologies build communication bridges between any users. Bluetooth transceivers have been in the active filed of recent research since the low power consumption of Bluetooth Low energy (BLE) has proved its positions in IoT applications compared with conventional Bluetooth devices. With the development of digital communication, people have a higher requirement for their communication quality so that decreasing bit error rate is one method to meet the requirements. This paper decreases the bit error rate (BER) to the BLE standard using utilizing data redundancy provided by the Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) code and convolutional code. To decrease the bit error, firstly, Bluetooth Low Energy and its applications about IoT are introduced. Also, to get deep understanding of this technology, basic principle of communication is required. Next, two main codes suitable for BLE communication are discussed. One is Cyclic Redundancy Check code, and the other is convolutional code. In this stage, it analyzes advantage and disadvantage about two codes, and then simulates these methods on MATLAB to see how they affect the BER. At the same time, a new approach is given for reducing BER after the comparison between CRC code and convolutional codes. It is the approach that combining CRC and convolutional code is applied to BLE error correction process. This method can have an effective result on error correction, which decreases the BER. Through this method, it can potentially extend the battery life of BLE device and help increase the quality of communication.