Energy efficiency evaluation of BLE 5 technology

Abstract. As the demand for consumer electronic gadgets keep on growing rapidly day by day, a class of wirelessly connected digital accessories is getting to be built up. In this case, energy efficiency is considered as an essential basic necessity for a wireless communication system to be well adapted for the internet of things (IoT) application. The protocol parameters must be optimized for a given application in order to minimize power consumption. An energy model is therefore required, which can predict the energy consumption of a wireless device based on, Bluetooth low energy (BLE), e.g., for different parameter values. In this case, the BLE 5 technique can be a very effective solution. Lately, the Bluetooth 5 specifications have been introduced in order to offer remarkable improvements in comparison to the previous versions of the protocol. Bluetooth 5 coded is a new special kind of connection that comes with reliable communication features that varies in speed, range, and energy consumption aiming at providing better long-distance connections, but at a lower bit rate. Bluetooth 5 targets to improve twice the speed, four times range, and eight times the advertising in comparison to Bluetooth 4. This thesis describes the evaluation of the energy efficiency of recently specified BLE 5 technique’s coded mode. This work analyses both the analytical, and experimental performance of the energy efficiency of BLE 5 (S = 8) coded mode solution. It includes analytical modelling, Matlab programming, and real-life measurement using Nordic semiconductor nRF52840 development kit. The performance of lately revealed BLE 5 coded technique is compared to the performance of the BLE 4, which is seen today to be mostly used in case of commercial wireless devices. To improve the communication range of this low-power technique for IoT purposes, BLE 5 coded mode uses a forward error correction (FEC) method. Because of coding overhead, the packet length increases, and the throughput decreases. In this thesis, the frequency 2.4 GHz is considered. The LE Coded PHY is responsible for adding two steps into the packet transmissions, and reception. Firstly, FEC method is applied to the packet so that the receiver can make a correction of bit errors when the packet is received, and would be capable to improve the packet error rate (PER). Secondly, a pattern mapper method is applied to the packet. This FEC, and pattern mapping results in getting better sensitivity. The experimental results from this thesis show that BLE 5 technique provides better packet error rate (PER) performance, communication range performance, and received signal strength indicator (RSSI) performance than BLE 4, and BLE 5 consumes less energy than BLE 4, which was found out using analytical modelling