Comparative Study on AFH Techniques in Different Interference Environments

Claeys

et al. 2021

Sensors

Self Cite

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a popular wireless communication protocol heavily used in Internet of Things applications. Nowadays, robustness is considered a key requirement in wireless communication. However, radio interference from various sources may affect the performance of BLE devices, leading to channel congestion. Therefore, there is a broadly recognized need of methodologies capable of sensing and avoiding interference. In this paper, two improvements at the data link layer for interference detection and channel selection are proposed to enhance the BLE connection robustness. This paper also presents a wide range of experimental evaluations aiming at validating the improvements and providing insights on both these improvements. Particularly, the communication performance of the BLE link layer is assessed in terms of channel usage distribution, supervision timeout ratio (STR) and packet loss rate (PLR) under different interference environments. Results from these experiments (reliability over 97% and 99% under two different harsh environments) highlight the effects of both improvements on the BLE robustness. Meanwhile, the authority of scheduling the whole mechanism is given to the link layer and even the higher application layer. This paper provides a set of solutions for BLE confronting interference in link layer.

Wi-Fi duty cycle ·

Wi-Fi channel occupancy = 16.7% ).…”

Section: Experiments and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 66%

“…In Figure 9 a, it is shown that the channel usage distribution of CSA #2 is again uniform but a bit more rough over all channels as mentioned in [ 31 , 32 ]. Again, the STR and PLR converge to approximately 16.5% close to the theoretical value of 16.7%.…”

Section: Experiments and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 72%

Bluetooth Low Energy Interference Awareness Scheme and Improved Channel Selection Algorithm for Connection Robustness

Claeys

et al. 2021

Sensors

Self Cite

“…As a prominent wireless technology, BLE is a typical communication protocol utilized by IoT applications [3]. It works in the 2.4 GHz frequency band, which suggests that a challenge for BLE is to maintain its performance under interference from other wireless technologies in the same frequency band [4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bluetooth Low Energy Reliability and Throughput under Wi-Fi Interference

Claeys

2022 XXXI International Scientific Conference Electronics (ET)

et al. 2022

In this paper, the performance of Bluetooth Low Energy is studied under different Wi-Fi interference. Two aspects of BLE performance are investigated, namely reliability and throughput. According to the practical experiment results, both the reliability as well as the throughput are highly impacted by Wi-Fi interference. Besides, a new discovery is that the impacts of interference on the two performance aspects are not proportional to one another. This research can be utilized by other studies as a proof or cornerstone.

“…As its popularity grows and more and more systems are deployed using BLE, its reliability is being researched. Pang et al [10] study the impact of the increasing number of devices and the impact of different radio frequency environments on BLE reliability [10,11]. Similarly, the work of Spörk et al [12] proposes improvements for the BLE stack to deal with the interference and thus improving the reliability of the spectrum [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimizing the Bluetooth Low Energy Service Discovery Process

Hallez

et al. 2021

Sensors

Self Cite

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), a short-range and low-power communication protocol, has gained a lot of popularity in recent years. A part of BLE is the Generic Attribute Profile (GATT) which defines the data communication between two devices. During the initial connection between two BLE devices a discovery of services, characteristics and descriptors is required for the GATT to operate. During this discovery phase, the device is unusable as it builds the foundation for further data transactions. When unoptimized, this discovery step can take up to a few seconds, leading to frustrations for the end user or delays in some applications. In this paper, we aim to find guidelines on how to optimize this discovery process. A simulation framework was developed, able to simulate and analyze the packet exchange of the service discovery, while taking link layer parameters into account. The results show that minimizing the connection interval and maximizing the data length leads to the lowest discovery times. Practical experiments in real environment, however, show that the theoretically calculated times are not reachable due to processing overhead and retransmissions. Theoretical results also show that the current BLE discovery process, even after optimizations, has a lot of overhead. To fix the problems with the current protocol, this paper proposes a new Rapid Service Discovery Protocol, which enables a fast and efficient service discovery.