From Sensor Networks to Internet of Things. Bluetooth Low Energy, a Standard for This Evolution

Abstract

Current sensor networks need to be improved and updated to satisfy new essential requirements of the Internet of Things, where cutting-edge applications will appear. These requirements are: total coverage, zero fails (high performance), scalability and sustainability (hardware and software). We are going to evaluate Bluetooth Low Energy as wireless transmission technology and as the ideal candidate for these improvements, due to its low power consumption, its low cost radio chips and its ability to communicate with users directly, using their smartphones or smartbands. However, this technology is relatively recent, and standard network topologies are not able to fulfil its new requirements. To address these shortcomings, the implementation of other more flexible topologies (as the mesh topology) will be very interesting. After studying it in depth, we have identified certain weaknesses, for example, specific devices are needed to provide network scalability, and the need to choose between high performance or sustainability. In this paper, after presenting the studies carried out on these new technologies, we propose a new packet format and a new BLE mesh topology, with two different configurations: Individual Mesh and Collaborative Mesh. Our results show how this topology improves the scalability, sustainability, coverage and performance.