Enabling Dynamic and Lightweight Management of Distributed Bluetooth Low Energy Devices

Abstract

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a wireless communication technology for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Although recent versions of BLE embrace the 6LoWPAN standard for IPv6 low-power device communication, this is often not the best choice for constrained-node networks due to downsides such as increased memory and computation overhead, heavier network stack, increased power consumption, backward incompatibility, etc. A crucial requirement for successful IoT solutions is an efficient strategy for monitoring and control of highly distributed sensor nodes. In this paper, we propose a dynamic and lightweight model for management of distributed constrained BLE nodes based on OMA Lightweight M2M (LWM2M) protocol. To this end, we have designed a new intermediate component, a BLE-LWM2M gateway (GW), which has dual roles: a BLE master that monitors and controls the BLE devices, and a LWM2M client that acts on behalf of an operator’s LWM2M management server. The BLE-LWM2M GW has interfaces to dynamically manage connected BLE devices as LWM2M objects, called ObjectTwins, in runtime without a need for user configuration. All services that BLE devices provide are mapped to the ObjectTwins in the gateway, which are exposed to the LWM2M server. Hence, this model enables a LWM2M server to manage distributed BLE devices by interacting with the BLE-LWM2M GW using the LWM2M standard methods, and the constrained devices can still use a native Bluetooth communication protocol. To verify its feasibility, a prototype of a mobile healthcare system has been implemented in a testbed.