Abstract
IoT includes many sensors that have to collect the data and send it to the superior nodes; for such interaction between the IoT devices, various wireless technologies are available, like infrared, Li-Fi, WI-Fi, Zigbee, Bluetooth, etc. Among all the available, Bluetooth proved the most promising short-range wireless communication technology due to various factors. To fulfil the increasing demand for wireless connectivity, the Bluetooth SIG must continuously perform up-gradation. Here, analysis of Bluetooth versions are discussed based on the characteristics such as speed, bandwidth, range, power, message capacity, beacon provision, compatibility, reliability, errors detection, correction capability, advertisement packets, duty cycle, slot availability masks, and many more. This analysis concluded that all the versions have their own set of merits and limitations. For the basic IoT applications (limited functionalities), Bluetooth 4.0/4.2 is a good choice, while for the complex IoT applications (advance functionalities), Bluetooth 5/ 5.1/ 5.2 is better.
TopIntroduction
The Internet of Things (IoT) involves various wireless communication technologies to makes devices capable of interacting with each other. Nowadays, IoT with various dedicated sensors, devices and wireless communication technologies making a human lifestyle easier and smarter. Therefore, in our personal lives, IoT devices are becoming more prevalent and pervasive. Due to the IoT era, sensors are everywhere in the smart society, and the trend will continue in the future. Today, every industry is changing towards automation under the vision of Robotic Process Automation (RPA). In such an industry, nowadays, machines/equipment are powered by some advanced technologies, like wireless sensor networks (WSN), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), cloud computing (CC), etc.
As IoT use increases, new challenges, requirements and research needs have arisen to fulfil the demands. Among all the IoT application requirements, wireless communication technology(low power requirement and high data security)is the most viable demand. IoT includes many sensors that collect the data from an environment and send the collected data to their superior node. For the data transmission from the sensors to its superior node, many wireless communication technologies are available such as radio-frequency identification (RFID), Infrared, Li-Fi, Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Bluetooth, LoRa, etc.
A general IoT architecture includes hardware, software, communication medium and application layer. The communication layer is a critical bridge between all the other layers and consists of a multi-layer stack, including the data link, network or transport, and session protocols. Bluetooth is at the data link layer to establish sensor to sensor connection or sensor to the gateway connection. Aguilar, Vidal and Gomez (2017), analytically and experimentally proved that among all the available short-range wireless technologies, Bluetooth has become the most adopted technology. Bluetooth is the most promising because of appearing everywhere or of being a very common technology. After reviewing all the other available wireless communication technologies, it has been considered that Bluetooth becomes the ultimate technology for many IoT applications. Following are the main reasons:
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Bluetooth has been embedded massively in the latest smartphones.
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It is less costly to deploy and maintenance.
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It is supported by all the operating systems including, iOS, Android, Linux, OSX, and Windows.
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It has low interference and a standardized protocol compatible with IPv6.
The day-to-day nature of IoT applications becoming more complex as it adds many new sensor nodes, devices and communication technologies. In the WSN, devices and sensor nodes regularly have to interact with each other. This interaction must be in minimum time and energy. Therefore, for the IoT, fast but lightweight short-range communication technology is needed. To fulfil the increasing demand for high speed, lightweight and secure wireless connectivity, Bluetooth Special Interest Group (Bluetooth SIG) continuously upgrading Bluetooth technology. In this chapter, Bluetooth versions 4.0, 4.2, 5, 5.1 and 5.2 are analyzed based on their characteristics such as data speed, network bandwidth, communication range, power requirement, message capacity, beacon provision, support for IoT, compatibility, reliability, errors detection, and correction capability, advertisement packets, coexistence with Wi-Fi devices, duty cycle, slot availability masks, periodic advertising synchronous transfer capability and many more.
For the development of any application, the developer has a responsibility to select the appropriate resources. The selection of resources must be according to the need. The resources must be simple, cheap, low energy consumable, high output and durable. This analysis for the various Bluetooth versions will help the IoT developer for the selection of the correct Bluetooth version as per the need.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Sensors: It is a device such as probes, gauges, meters, etc. those sense the physical parameters like temperature, humidity, object presence, light, etc. from an environment and convert it into an equivalent electrical signal.
Beacon: It is an intentionally noticeable object to attract attention to a specific location.
BLE Beacon: It is similar to the lighthouse; the beacon is a small (coin size) wireless device that transmits signals to other nearby smart devices by using low-energy Bluetooth technology.
Actuators: It is a device such as controllers, lasers, robotic arms, etc. that translates an electrical signal from the IoT system into physical actions.
Bluetooth Advertising: It is a method of data transmission through Bluetooth.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID): It is a digital identification in which the RFID tag (a small chip with an antenna) broadcast a unique value, which can be read by the RFID reader.