Power consumption analysis of bluetooth low energy commercial products and their implications for IoT applications

Abstract

Internet of things (IoT) has become a very important business segment for the industry since it is estimated that 50 billion devices will be interconnected by 2020, where 30% of them are forecasted to use Bluetooth low energy as the enabling communication protocol. IoT involves smart devices that can be connected to the cloud in order to share and process all types of data collected through sensors. Moreover, 100% of smartphones and tablets shipped in 2018 include Bluetooth low energy, which will allow the interoperation with the upcoming 5G standard. As a result, different low-power hardware platforms have become available to either build prototypes, or implement full IoT solutions. One fundamental aspect while choosing a development platform is to analyze the power consumption of its components to build an optimal low-power application and extend the battery life. In this work, we present current consumption measurements of four Bluetooth low energy commercial platforms configured as central and as peripheral devices, these measurements are aimed to provide the data that are not available in the datasheets and which is needed to select, in an optimal way, the proper connection parameters for the protocol.