Detailed Examination of a Packet Collision Model for Bluetooth Low Energy Advertising Mode

Mohammad Ghamari,William Harwin,Balazs Janko,Cinna Soltanpur,Emma Villeneuve,R Simon Sherratt,Javad Khangosstar

doi:10.1109/access.2018.2866323

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate the amount of energy that is required to successfully transmit information inside the Bluetooth low-energy (BLE) advertising packets. There are applications that require more than one BLE node to simultaneously transmit data. The BLE protocol utilizes a specific communication method termed the advertising mode to perform unidirectional broadcasts of data from the advertising devices. However, with an increased number of BLE devices advertising simultaneously, there will be inevitable packet collisions from the advertising devices. This results in a waste of energy, specifically in low-power applications where lower consumption is desirable to minimize the need for battery replacements. This paper examines a packet collision model for the BLE advertising mode with the results validated using experimental data. Our analysis shows that when the throughput of the BLE network starts to fall due to an increase in the number of packet collisions, the energy consumption of the BLE nodes increases exponentially with respect to the number of nodes.

Highlights

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a short-range wireless communication technology primarily designed for use in battery-operated applications where ultra-low power consumption is of premium importance [1], [2]
The aim of this paper is to investigate the amount of energy that is required to successfully transmit information inside the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) advertising packets
Our analysis shows that when the throughput of the BLE network starts to fall due to an increase in the number of packet collisions, the energy consumption of the BLE nodes increase exponentially with respect to the number of nodes

Summary

Introduction

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a short-range wireless communication technology primarily designed for use in battery-operated applications where ultra-low power consumption is of premium importance [1], [2]. Synchronization can be achieved in the order of a few milliseconds compared to seconds spent by previous Bluetooth protocols [5]. This is significantly valuable, for resource-limited and latencycritical devices such as those used in health-monitoring and industrial applications [6]. In terms of energy consumption, the BLE protocol is usually compared with low-power wireless technologies such as IEEE 802.15.4, ZigBee and ANT [7], [8]. The energy consumption of the BLE protocol had been evaluated and analyzed previously [9], [10] and has been compared with ZigBee and IEEE 802.15.4 technologies [11]-[13]. Compared to ZigBee based on the aforementioned analysis, BLE protocol has proven itself to be very energy efficient in terms of the number of bytes transmitted per joule spent

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Conclusion