World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology

International Journal of Computer and Information Engineering

Vol:10, No:10, 2016

Comparison of Power Consumption of WiFi Inbuilt

Internet of Things Device with Bluetooth Low
Energy
Darshana Thomas, Edward Wilkie, James Irvine

Abstract—The Internet of things (IoT) is currently a highly protocols with reduced data rates such as 433 Mhz and BLE are
researched topic, especially within the context of the smart home. the industry standard today. Although 433 MHz is effective for
These are small sensors that are capable of gathering data and short range communication, it is incapable of supporting long
transmitting it to a server. The majority of smart home products use distance transmission. The range offered by BLE is far greater
International Science Index, Computer and Information Engineering Vol:10, No:10, 2016 waset.org/Publication/10005628

protocols such as ZigBee or Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). As these than 433 MHz and it is capable of supporting up to 20 devices.
small sensors are increasing in number, the need to implement these
Although WiFi is ubiquitous with more range and device
with much more capable and ubiquitous transmission technology is
necessary. The high power consumption is the reason that holds coverage than BLE and 433 MHz, the power consumption
these small sensors back from using other protocols such as the restrains it from being implemented into IoT sensor devices.
most ubiquitous form of communication, WiFi. Comparing the power In previous paper [18], we have developed a low-cost
consumption of existing transmission technologies to one with WiFi WiFi inbuilt device capable of providing much less power
inbuilt, would provide a better understanding for choosing between consumption than 433 MHz. Later, the same device was
these technologies. We have developed a small IoT device with WiFi modified with a low power MSP430 to further reduce the
capability and proven that it is much more efficient than the first power consumption [17]. In this paper, we will focus on the
protocol, 433 MHz. We extend our work in this paper and compare comparison of our WiFi inbuilt device with a BLE device
WiFi power consumption with the other most widely used protocol to determine whether WiFi can be a suitable substitute for
BLE. The experimental results in this paper would conclude whether
IoT over BLE. Table I represents a comparison of the main
the developed prototype is capable in terms of power consumption to
replace the existing protocol BLE with WiFi. protocols being used in this paper: WiFi and BLE.
Keywords—Bluetooth, internet of things, power consumption,
WiFi. TABLE I
W I F I VS . BLE
WiFi BLE
I. I NTRODUCTION Frequency / GHz 2.4, 5 2.4

T
Range / meters 32-95 77
HE IoT is currently one of the most researched areas, Power Consumption High Very Low
especially within the context of ‘Smart Home’ [11] and Latency / ms 150 150
‘Smart Cities’ [12]. IoT is a network of devices which is Bit Rate / Mbps 600 1

capable of communicating through wireless protocols such

as WiFi, BLE, and ZigBee [10]. These devices, when Table I shows that WiFi is capable of operating in more
implemented with sensors, can be seen as being ‘smart’; the frequencies than BLE and has a much higher data rate. With
idea behind IoT. According to Cisco and Gartner, the number the range and latency almost equal, the defining factor between
of these small devices being used in 2016 would be 16 these two protocols comes down to power consumption. Since
billion [3] with an expected rise to 50 billion by 2020 [9]. IoT devices need to be very power efficient in order to have
The majority of these devices will be battery powered and long life spans, BLE has been favoured over WiFi. However,
expected to last for many years. In agreement with Lattice if the low powered WiFi module we have created can rival the
Semiconductor, power efficiency is one of the main challenges power consumption of that of the BLE, we can take advantage
that constrains the advancements of IoT devices [16]. Since of WiFi’s high data rates and multiple frequency bands.
power efficiency is desired, a power hungry protocol such as The paper is organized as follows: Section I provides a
WiFi is undesirable. However, with the majority of homes, brief introduction with subsections discussing BLE and WiFi.
cities, transport stations, and airports already supporting WiFi, Section II provides an overview of the experiments carried out
a low energy WiFi solution could be favored over Bluetooth, followed by Section III discussing the experiment scenario in
Zigbee or 433MHz. detail. Section IV discusses the results obtained through the
The first protocol 433 MHz is power efficient and popular experiments with Section V concluding the paper.
compared to the other existing protocols. Lower powered
Darshana Thomas, Edward Wilkie and James Irvine are with the A. BLE
Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering University of
Strathclyde Glasgow, G1 1XW (e-mail: [email protected], BLE, also known as Bluetooth Smart, is an enhancement of
[email protected], [email protected]). the existing Bluetooth protocol [8]. BLE has reduced power

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 World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology
International Journal of Computer and Information Engineering
Vol:10, No:10, 2016

consumption when compared with classic Bluetooth [7]. It is within [17]. As the previous paper looked into the transmission
supported by the majority of smart phones and tablets, making of temperature data to a remote destination using WiFi, we
it more appealing for IoT devices [14]. It is currently being recreate the same scenarios with BLE for comparison within
used for applications in the health [19] and fitness sector and this paper. The BLE module used for the experiment is an
within industry related applications. ADAFRUIT UART FRIEND [6]. A DS18S20 temperature
BLE is capable of supporting up to 20 devices compared sensor [1] is used throughout the experiments.
with classic Bluetooth which offered less than half of that. The The experiment is as follows: Bluetooth transmission of the
range of BLE devices can reach up to 77 meters. Again, this temperature data obtained through the processor, MSP430.
is more than double that of classic Bluetooth with has a total
coverage between 5-30 meters. However, classic Bluetooth III. B LUETOOTH T RANSMISSION WITH MSP430 AND
had a higher data rate than BLE sending 1-3 Mbit/s whereas DS18S20
BLE transmits 1 Mbit/s. BLE consumes much less power than In this scenario, the MSP430 [4] microcontroller would
classic Bluetooth and is more secure when transmitting data. receive the temperature data from the DS18S20 sensor and
BLE uses 128-bit AES encryption with Counter Mode using the BLE module, transmit it to a user’s mobile device
CBC-MAC whereas classic bluetooth uses 56/128 bit using Bluetooth. An MSP430 processor is used in this
International Science Index, Computer and Information Engineering Vol:10, No:10, 2016 waset.org/Publication/10005628

encryption. The connection times between BLE and its devices experiment with the BLE used as a slave device. The processor
takes around 1 ms. Standard Bluetooth could take up to 100 is necessary as the results will be compared with the WiFi IoT
ms to establish a connection between a device. The power device which used the same processor in the previous paper
consumption when establishing a connection between modules [17]. In this experiment, a MSP430 microcontroller was used
and devices is reduced in the BLE. to supply power to the devices.

B. WiFi
WiFi is an IEEE 802.11 standard [15] that was developed to
compliment IEEE 802.3. WiFi offers a full TCP/IP stack when
connecting to the Internet. Ever since WiFi was introduced,
it has been very popular among users. Almost all of today’s
technology: Laptops, smart phones, tablets, and TVs come
integrated with WiFi. It is this integration that has made it
become a well established standard. The majority of WiFi
networks operate at the 2.4 GHz band. When higher data
rates are needed, WiFi is capable of operating in the 5 GHz
band providing a clearer signal with more channel space.
However, the range of 5 GHz radios is shorter than 2.4 GHz
which is why the 2.4 GHz band is often used within homes. Fig. 1 Experiment Setup
Enterprise applications often favour the 5 GHz band over 2.4
GHz because it is better at serving multiple access points. The code is set up such that the BLE module transmits
Power consumption has always been an issue for WiFi temperature data to the user when the user inputs a specific
[20] making it extremely inefficient for IoT devices and character command. This command acts as a flag in order
therefore avoided by consumers and researchers. However, to control when the data is transmitted. After the device has
having looked into this, we have discovered that these issues received the character, the temperature data is transmitted by
become negligible when the WiFi module is combined with a the MSP430 + DS18S20 sensor via Bluetooth to the users
powerful microprocessor. Based on the results [17], the new mobile device. Fig. 2 shows the MSP430 processor and the
WiFi device is capable of consuming less power than other sensor on the IoT WiFi inbuilt device that we have designed.
protocols such as the 433 MHz. This paper is an extension In order to get as accurate power measurements as possible,
of that work by comparing the WiFi inbuilt IoT device to the the Portapow is used to record to power consumption for each
currently most popular protocol: BLE. device [5]. This particular method of transmission was chosen
The next section looks into the experiments carried out for in order to monitor the power consumption. If the BLE module
this paper. is constantly transmitting data, it would be impossible to have
a clear measurement of the power consumption. Constantly
II. E XPERIMENT transmitting data is impractical for IoT devices which solely
In comparison to WiFi inbuilt IoT devices, BLE devices rely on battery packs as their source of power because the BLE
are popular within IoT devices in terms of lower power consumes power at a much higher rate when transmitting. By
consumption [13]. For this paper, we compare the power choosing to only transmit data when the user requires it, we can
consumption of two IoT devices: WiFi and BLE. The reduce the overall power being consumed thus increasing the
description and methodology in implementing the low cost life span of the small sensors. We use this method to replicate
WiFi module for these small sensor devices is provided in and compare the power consumption of sleep mode in WiFi
[17]. The power consumption results are discussed in detail modules.

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 World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology
International Journal of Computer and Information Engineering
Vol:10, No:10, 2016

1.2
ESP-03+DS18S20
MSP430+DS18S20+ ESP-03
1 MSP430+DS18S20+BLE

Power [mWh]
0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2
Fig. 2 Prototype [17] 0 2 4 6 8
International Science Index, Computer and Information Engineering Vol:10, No:10, 2016 waset.org/Publication/10005628

Transmission Period (Seconds) ·104

Fig. 3 Comparison Graph
When a WiFi module enters sleep mode, all connections
remain established between devices. When the BLE wants to
reduce the power consumption over a long period of time,
the user must disconnect the device and reconnect when the The graph of results illustrates the three different power
data are needed. When a connection has been established and consumption scenarios. With the WiFi only module, the power
maintained by the BLE module and device, the BLE module consumption is higher than the BLE after 27 transmissions.
consumes more power than when having no devices attached. In the beginning, however, the BLE’s power consumption is
In light of this, all devices are disconnected from the BLE higher. In the long term, BLE is more efficient in terms of
module to ensure the module consumes as little power as power consumption. While comparing the BLE module to the
possible. WiFi inbuilt device we have developed, it can be seen that the
The next section discusses the results of the experiment in power consumption of the BLE is higher in both the short and
more detail. long terms. This is due to the extra power being consumed by
the devices, when establishing and de-establishing connections
IV. D ISCUSSION OF R ESULTS between the BLE when transmitting date.
In our device, the WiFi module goes into sleep mode
The BLE results gathered are compared with two other retaining all previous connections with the user. Therefore,
scenarios from [18], [17]. A WiFi only module, ESP03 [2] each time the WiFi module awakens, a new connection does
and a WiFi module with a MSP430 processor are compared not need to be established. Overall, this results in less power
against the BLE results with MSP430 processor. All modules being consumed by the WiFi inbuilt IoT device. Table II
are equipped with a DS18S20 temperature sensor. The WiFi provides a overview of the graph’s results over a long period
module with a MSP430 processor is the IoT device we have of time.
mentioned throughout the paper. The solo WiFi module is
used to support our claim that the WiFi module is more
power efficient with a powerful microprocessor attached. The V. C ONCLUSION
same processor was used with the BLE module so the results
Based on the results from this paper, the WiFi inbuilt IoT
are as accurate as possible. The power consumption was
device we have developed consumes less power than the BLE
monitored over a long period of time with similar scenarios
module. These devices are tested under the same conditions
being performed on the BLE device that where performed on
with use of a microcontroller such as the MSP430. Although,
the WiFi module in [18], [17].
if the ESP03 WiFi module is used on its own i.e. without a
microprocessor, the power consumption is shown to be low
TABLE II only for short period of time. In this case, the BLE module is
E NERGY U SE PER T RANSMISSION much better than the WiFi module.
Transmission every BLE (mWh) ESP (mWh) ESP+MSP (mWh) If the BLE module is capable of operating as a master
10 minutes 0.607 0.285 0.331
30 minutes 0.607 0.297 0.333
device, then the need for an external microprocessor would
1 Hour 0.608 0.315 0.337 be unnecessary. This not only reduces the complexity of the
2 Hour 0.610 0.350 0.344 system but also provides less power consumption. However,
3 Hour 0.612 0.421 0.359
4 Hour 0.616 0.563 0.389 many designs require an additional microprocessor in any case.
1 Day 0.813 1.131 0.508 When the WiFi module is coupled with the processor, the
power consumption is much lower than the BLE module and

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 World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology
International Journal of Computer and Information Engineering
Vol:10, No:10, 2016

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