Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 Jan 23;17(1):159.
doi: 10.3390/s17010159.

Opportunistic Sensor Data Collection with Bluetooth Low Energy

Sergio Aguilar  1 , Rafael Vidal  2 , Carles Gomez  3
Affiliations

Opportunistic Sensor Data Collection with Bluetooth Low Energy

Sergio Aguilar et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) has gained very high momentum, as witnessed by its widespread presence in smartphones, wearables and other consumer electronics devices. This fact can be leveraged to carry out opportunistic sensor data collection (OSDC) in scenarios where a sensor node cannot communicate with infrastructure nodes. In such cases, a mobile entity (e.g., a pedestrian or a vehicle) equipped with a BLE-enabled device can collect the data obtained by the sensor node when both are within direct communication range. In this paper, we characterize, both analytically and experimentally, the performance and trade-offs of BLE as a technology for OSDC, for the two main identified approaches, and considering the impact of its most crucial configuration parameters. Results show that a BLE sensor node running on a coin cell battery can achieve a lifetime beyond one year while transferring around 10 Mbit/day, in realistic OSDC scenarios.

Keywords: Bluetooth Low Energy; Bluetooth Smart; Internet of Things; beacons; modeling; opportunistic data collection; performance evaluation; sensor networks.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Illustration of OSDC concept examples, where the mobile entity is a bus (Left) or a pedestrian (Right). The mobile entity is equipped with a BLE device and collects data from the sensor node during the contact time.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Illustration of the two main OSDC approaches with BLE, for the two different advertisement settings in each one. (a) advertisement-based approach with one advertising packet per advertising event; (b) advertisement-based approach with three advertising packets per advertising event; (c) connection-based approach with one advertising packet per advertising event; (d) connection-based approach with three advertising packets per advertising event.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Experimental setup for current measurements of the BLE121LR modules using an Agilent N333 power analyzer. The module at the left works as a slave that connects to the module at the right, which operates as a master.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Current consumption profile of an advertising event for the BLE121LR platform operating as a non-connectable advertiser. Three-advertisement (leftmost) and single-advertisement (rightmost) advertising events are shown.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Illustration of variables involved in the calculation of the average current consumption in the advertisement-based approach (Iavg_adv). ‘Adv Event’ refers to an advertising event.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Current consumption profile of an advertising event for the BLE121LR platform, operating as a connectable advertiser. Single-advertisement (Left) and three-advertisement (Right) advertising events are shown.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Illustration of time variables involved in the calculation of the average current consumption in the connection-based approach (Iavg_conn).
Figure 8
Figure 8
Illustration of the components related with connection establishment, use and finalization. S and M denote Slave and Master, respectively. A round trip exchange comprises a packet sent by the master to the slave, and the response sent by the latter.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Average current consumption of the sensor node in the advertisement-based approach, as a function of advInterval, and for both N = 1 and N = 3.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Average current consumption of the sensor node within connInterval (Iavg_CI) in the connection-based approach, as a function of connInterval, and for BER = 0.
Figure 11
Figure 11
Average current consumption of the sensor node within connInterval (Iavg_CI) in the connection-based approach, as a function of connInterval, and for several BER values.
Figure 12
Figure 12
Average current consumption of the sensor node within a Tconn period in the connection-based approach, as a function of connInterval, and for N = 3 and BER = 0.
Figure 13
Figure 13
Average current consumption of the sensor node within a Tconn period in the connection-based approach, as a function of connInterval, for several BER values, and for N = 3, advInterval = 0.02 s, and Tcontact = 150 s.
Figure 14
Figure 14
Average current consumption of the sensor node in the connection-based approach, for a time between contacts of one day, as a function of advInterval, and for different N and Tcontact, and for BER = 0. A theoretical value of Tcontact = 0 has been evaluated, however depicted results in the logarithmic representation used in the figure are very close to those of Tcontact = 45 s. Thus they have been excluded from the figure for the sake of clarity.
Figure 15
Figure 15
Average current consumption of the sensor node in the connection-based approach, for a time between contacts of one day, for N = 1, Tcontact = 45 s, and connInterval = 4 s, as a function of advInterval, and for different BER values.
Figure 16
Figure 16
Average current consumption of the sensor node, for the advertisement-based and connection-based approaches, as a function of advInterval and for different N and Tcontact values, and for BER = 0.
Figure 17
Figure 17
Average sensor node lifetime, for the advertisement-based and connection-based approaches, as a function of advInterval, and for different N, Tcontact and BER values, and assuming a time between contacts of one day. For connection-based results, connInterval = 4 s has been assumed.
Figure 18
Figure 18
Maximum amount of collected data per contact interval, for the advertisement-based and connection-based approaches, as a function of advInterval, and for different Tcontact values. Only curves for connInterval = 4 s are shown, for the sake of figure clarity.
Figure 19
Figure 19
Maximum amount of collected data per contact interval, for the advertisement-based and connection-based approaches, as a function of advInterval, for different BER values, and for Tcontact = 150 s. connInterval = 4 s has been assumed.
Figure 20
Figure 20
Influence of connInterval on the maximum amount of collected data per contact interval, for the connection-based approach, and for different Tcontact and advInterval values.
Figure 21
Figure 21
Influence of connInterval on the maximum amount of collected data per contact interval, for the connection-based approach, for different BER values, for advInterval = 0.02 s and Tcontact = 150 s.
Figure 22
Figure 22
Energy cost for the advertisement-based and the connection-based approaches as a function of advInterval, for different Tcontact and N values, assuming connInterval = 4 s, and a time between contacts of one day.
Figure 23
Figure 23
Maximum measured amount of collected data per contact interval, as a function of connInterval, for Tcontact values of 45 s and 150 s.
Figure 24
Figure 24
Number of round trip exchanges measured per connInterval, as a function of connInterval.
Figure 25
Figure 25
Measured amount of collected data as a function of distance between sender and receiver, in the university campus and beach scenarios.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Gomez C., Paradells J. Wireless home automation networks: A survey of architectures and technologies. IEEE Commun. Mag. 2010;48:92–101. doi: 10.1109/MCOM.2010.5473869. - DOI
    1. Dujovne D., Watteyne T., Vilajosana X., Thubert P. 6TiSCH: Deterministic IP-enabled industrial internet (of things) IEEE Commun. Mag. 2014;52:36–41. doi: 10.1109/MCOM.2014.6979984. - DOI
    1. Pelusi L., Passarella A., Conti M. Opportunistic networking: Data forwarding in disconnected mobile ad hoc networks. IEEE Commun. Mag. 2006;44:134–141. doi: 10.1109/MCOM.2006.248176. - DOI
    1. Gomez C., Paradells J. Urban Automation Networks: Current and Emerging Solutions for Sensed Data Collection and Actuation in Smart Cities. Sensors. 2015;15:22874–22898. doi: 10.3390/s150922874. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Valente J., Sanz D., Barrientos A., del Cerro J., Ribeiro A., Rossi C. An Air-Ground Wireless Sensor Network for Crop Monitoring. Sensors. 2011;11:6088–6108. doi: 10.3390/s110606088. - DOI

LinkOut - more resources