The basics of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)

Abhishek Gupta & Imran Mohammed, Cypress Semiconductor - October 14, 2016

Bluetooth technology has revolutionized wireless communications between devices with its
ubiquitous and simple characteristics. It allows devices to communicate without cables while
maintaining high levels of security. Because of its low power and low cost, Bluetooth has played a
pivotal role in the evolution of applications from high-speed automotive devices to complex medical
devices.

The ease and the global acceptance of Bluetooth technology means any Bluetooth-enabled device
can connect with other devices located in close proximity through a process known as pairing.
Pairing allows devices to establish a full duplex communication by transmitting data and voice
through short range, ad hoc networks known as piconets that can link up to eight devices. One
device serves as the master device, while the rest of the devices within the network/piconet are slave
devices. The master device acts as a hub, and slave devices communicate through the master device
in order to communicate with each other. Another important characteristic of Bluetooth technology
is its use of frequency hopping to reduce the impact of interference.

The full duplex capabilities of Bluetooth technology provide users with innovative features such as
connecting a phone with a Bluetooth music speaker, taking calls while driving a car, connecting two
laptops for file sharing, and connecting a gaming console with a Bluetooth-enabled gaming
controller, to name a few use cases.

Bluetooth Low Energy

Bluetooth Low Energy is the intelligent, power-friendly version of Bluetooth wireless technology. It
is already playing a significant role in transforming smart gadgets to smarter gadgets by making
them compact, affordable, and less complex.

Bluetooth Low Energy, also marketed as Bluetooth Smart, started as part of the Bluetooth 4.0 Core
Specification. Initially designed by Nokia as Wibree before being adopted by the Bluetooth Special
Interest Group (SIG), its initial focus was to provide a radio standard with the lowest possible power
consumption, specifically optimized for low cost, low bandwidth, low power, and low complexity.

These design goals are evident through the core specification, which attempts to make BLE a
genuine low-power standard, designed to actually be implemented by semiconductor manufacturers
and used in real-world applications tight on energy with minimal budget. It is already a widely
adopted technology that can realistically stake claim to run for an extended period of time off a
single coin cell.

While BLE is a superior technology on its own merit, what has driven its phenomenal adoption rate
is that it is the right technology, with the right compromises, at the right time. For a relatively young
standard, the number of product designs that already include BLE puts it well ahead of other
wireless technologies at the same point in their release cycles.

The challenges classic Bluetooth faced were fast battery draining and frequent loss of connection,
requiring frequent pairing and re-pairing. Being able to successfully address these is one of the
reasons for BLE’s rapid growth. Further driving adoption is the phenomenal growth in
smartphones, tablets, and mobile computing. Early and active adoption of BLE by mobile industry
heavyweights broke open the doors for wider implementation of BLE. This in turn has pushed
semiconductor manufacturers to commit their limited resources to the technology they felt was the
most likely to flourish in the long run.

While the mobile and tablet markets have become increasingly mature, the need for connectivity
between the outside world and these devices has a huge growth potential. It offers peripheral
vendors a unique opportunity to develop innovative devices that solve problems consumers might
not even realize that they have today. So many benefits have converged around BLE, creating an
opportunity for small and nimble product designers to gain access to a potentially massive market
with task-specific, creative, and innovative products on a relatively modest design budget. BLE also
allows these developers to design viable products today that can talk to any modern mobile platform
using chips, tools, and standards that are easy to access.

Features

1. The lowest power consumption

Everything from physical design to use models is designed to keep power consumption at a
minimum. To reduce power consumption, a BLE device is kept in sleep mode most of the time. When
an event occurs, the device wakes and a short message is transferred to a gateway, PC, or
smartphone. Maximum/peak power consumption is less than 15 mA and the average power
consumption is about 1 μA. The active power consumption is reduced to a tenth of the energy
consumption of classic Bluetooth. In low duty cycle applications, a button cell battery could provide
5-10 years of reliable operation.

2. Cost efficient and compatible

To offer compatibility with classic Bluetooth technology and cost efficiency for small battery-
operated devices, there are two chipset types:

● Dual-mode technology with both BLE and classic Bluetooth functionality

● Stand-alone BLE technology optimized for small battery-operated devices with low cost and low
power consumption as their focus

3. Robustness, security, and reliability

BLE technology uses the same adaptive frequency hopping (AFH) technology as classic Bluetooth
technology. This enables BLE to achieve robust transmission in the ‘noisy’ RF environments found in
the home, industrial, and medical applications. To minimize the cost and energy consumption of
using AFH, BLE technology has reduced the number of channels to 40 2-MHz wide channels instead
of the 79 1-MHz wide channels used with classic Bluetooth technology.

4. Wireless co-existence

Bluetooth technology, Wireless LAN, IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee, and several proprietary radios use the
license-free 2.4GHz Industrial Scientific Medical (ISM) band. With so many technologies sharing the
same radio space, interference can decrease wireless performance (i.e., increasing latency and
decreasing throughput) due to the need for error correction and retransmission. In demanding
applications, interference can be reduced through frequency planning and special antenna design.
As both classic Bluetooth technology and BLE technology utilize AFH, which minimizes interference
with other radio technologies, Bluetooth transmission is robust and reliable.

5. Connection range

BLE technology has a slightly different modulation than classic Bluetooth technology. This
modulation differentiation offers a range of up to 300 meters with a 10 dBm radio chipset (BLE
maximum).

6. Ease of use and integration

A BLE piconet is typically based on a master connected to a number of slaves. A device is either a
master or a slave, but never both. The master controls how often the slaves are allowed to
communicate, and the slave only communicates by request from the master. A new feature BLE adds
compared to classic Bluetooth technology is “advertising” functionality. With this feature, a device
acting as a slave can announce that it has something to transmit to the master. An advertisement
message can also include an event or a measurement value.
Technical details
Technical details

● Data transfers – BLE supports very short data packets (8 octet minimum up to 27 octets maximum)
that are transferred at 1 Mbps. All connections use advanced sniff-sub rating to achieve ultra-low
duty cycles to keep energy consumption to a minimum.
● Frequency hopping – BLE uses the AFH common to all versions of Bluetooth technology to
minimize interference from other technologies in the 2.4 GHz ISM Band. Efficient multi-path
benefits increase link budgets and effective operating range as well as optimize energy
consumption.
● Host control – BLE places a significant amount of intelligence in the controller. This allows the host
to sleep for longer periods of time and be woken up by the controller only when the host needs to
perform some action. This allows for the greatest current savings since the host processor typically
consumes greater power than the BLE controller.
● Latency – BLE can support connection setup and data transfer in as quickly as 3 ms. This enables
an application to establish a connection and transfer authenticated data in just a few milliseconds
for a short communication burst before quickly tearing down the connection.
● Range – An increased modulation index allows for a maximum range for BLE of over 100 meters.
● Robustness – BLE uses a strong 24-bit CRC on all packets to ensure the maximum robustness
against interference.
● Strong security – Full AES-128 encryption using CCM provides strong encryption and
authentication of data packets so communications are secure.
● Topology – BLE uses a 32-bit access address on every packet for each slave, allowing billions of
devices to be connected. The technology is optimized for one-to-one connections while allowing
one-to-many connections using a star topology.
 Table 1 Comparison between classic Bluetooth and BLE

Applications

Because of its ubiquitous deployment in portable devices, BLE allows for wholly new applications
across all industries. For example, consider the different ways BLE can be used at a trade show to
increase the effectiveness of a company’s investment in meeting new customers:

1. Gamification – BLE can be used to encourage attendees to explore less popular areas of a trade
show booth by offering them special rewards for discovering strategically placed beacons in those
areas.

2. Sponsorships - Leverage beacons for additional revenue by pushing notifications that prompt
attendees to check out the closest booth when they pass by a certain zone at the trade show venue.
This can be a premium service offered to sponsors.

3. Heat mapping - With access to real-time statistics, beacons can recognize hotspots and send alerts
to event managers about locations that are overcrowded and more prone to security breaches.

4. Content delivery - Attendees can avoid the long wait for a copy of the presentation slides via
email. BLE beacons can recognize attendees at a session and automatically deliver slides, e-books,
and other collateral during or immediately after the session.

5. Auto check-in - Event organizers can easily gather information on the number of people attending
an event or a trade show and view their profiles in real-time by setting up beacons to simulate
check-ins at the entrance of the conference venue. This requires no manual interaction from users. If
a user has downloaded the app and enabled Bluetooth on his/her mobile device, the app will
automatically check-in as soon as the user walks into the venue.

A mature ecosystem is already available for BLE development. Developers have access to a wide
range of chips and modules that can speed both hardware and software development of BLE-enabled
devices. For example, Cypress offers its PSoC 4 BLE processor based on the ARM Cortex-M0 core
that integrates analog front ends, digital logic, CapSense, and a Bluetooth LE radio for a one-chip
approach to BLE. For OEMs preferring a fully integrated module, the Cypress EZ-BLE PRoC module
is a 10×10×1.8 mm certified and programmable BLE module designed for ease-of-use and reduced
time-to-market built around Cypress’s PRoC BLE chip.
For more details on how to design with BLE see:

1. Getting Started with PSoC 4 BLE

2. Getting Started with PRoC BLE

Also see:

● Bluetooth Smart update brings major changes

● Implementing Bluetooth Smart modules in industrial IoT applications
● Make the most of Bluetooth LE advertising mode
● Bluetooth Smart module requires no RF design expertise to use
● IoT module promises WiFi-LoRa-BLE triple play
● Wearable computing meets Bluetooth Smart