Elsevier

Ad Hoc Networks

Volume 57, 15 March 2017, Pages 19-31
Ad Hoc Networks

Building the Internet of Things with bluetooth smart

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adhoc.2016.08.012Get rights and content

Abstract

The Internet of Things, or the IoT, is an emerging, disruptive technology that enables physical devices to communicate across disparate networks. IP has been the de facto standard for seamless interconnectivity in the traditional Internet; and piggybacking on the success of IP, 6LoWPAN has been the first standardized technology to realize it for networks of resource-constrained devices. In the recent past Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) a.k.a Bluetooth Smart - a subset of the Bluetooth v4.0 and the latest v4.2 stack, has surfaced as an appealing alternative, with many competing advantages over available low-power communication technologies in the IoT space such as IEEE 802.15.4. However, BLE is a closed standard and lacks open hardware and firmware support, something that hinders innovation and development in this field. In this article, we aim to overcome some of the constraints in BLE’s core building blocks by making three contributions: first, we present the design of a new open hardware platform for BLE; second, we provide a Contiki O.S. port for the new platform; and third, we identify research challenges and opportunities in 6LoWPAN-connected Bluetooth Smart. We believe that the knowledge and insights will facilitate IoT innovations based on this promising technology.

Introduction

We can automate different functions in our everyday life by embedding a tiny computer with limited storage and communication capabilities in physical objects around us. The network of these smart objects or things using the Internet protocol (IP) is called the 6LoWPAN [1] or IPv6 over low-power wireless personal area networks, and the interconnection of 6LoWPAN networks with the Internet form the Internet of Things (IoT). IPv6, potentially, offers unlimited address space to connect billions of uniquely identifiable smart things with the Internet. 6LoWPAN is an IoT enabling technology that makes it possible to run the heavyweight IPv6 protocol in resource-constrained devices, by offering compression and fragmentation capabilities. Unlike conventional wireless sensor networks (WSN), 6LoWPAN networks are being deployed in environments where people are an integral part of the system.

Low-power IEEE 802.15.4 [2] is the de facto link and physical layer standard for 6LoWPAN networks. However, new technologies are emerging; and among the few energy efficient communication technologies, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is an appealing alternative. BLE, marketed as Bluetooth Smart, is a lightweight variant of Classic Bluetooth targeted for low-power resource-constrained devices. Since the introduction of BLE in Bluetooth 4.0[3], [4], there has been a widespread adoption of this technology by big and small technology vendors. Currently, most high-end smartphones support BLE.

Bluetooth 4.2 [5], released in December 2014, further brings Internet Protocol (IP) capabilities to Bluetooth - which means that we are now able to connect a Bluetooth device with the Internet using standardized mechanisms. In addition to the IP support, Bluetooth 4.2 offers National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standardized advanced Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) based security, enhanced privacy, and increased data rate and speed. One of the main competitive advantages BLE has over other low-power wireless technologies (such as IEEE 802.15.4) is out-of-the box support in most smartphones1, which enables seamless and infrastructure-less integration of BLE devices with the Internet. This makes BLE a potential disruptive technology for the IoT.

BLE offers many advantages over its competitors, but when it comes to the wireless technology aspect for the IoT, it is not an open standard and lacks open hardware and firmware support. IoT has a huge potential to bring enormous innovations; however, the close-source nature of the BLE firmware becomes a great hindrance. In order to enable IoT innovations, it will be highly motivational for thousands of new IoT startups to have access to open BLE hardware and firmware/software. BLE also lacks some of the important communication paradigms that are integral to the IoT such as multi-hop communication, secure broadcast, and group communication. Currently, BLE only supports the client-server communication model where two devices that are in the direct radio range of each other can communicate. Considering that BLE is a low-power wireless technology targeted for resource constrained IoT devices, the single-hop-only topology limits the communication range to just a few meters. Therefore, new communication paradigms are needed for BLE before we can take its full advantage.

In this article, we make the following contributions.

  • We describe novel BLE features that make IoT ready in congruence with the IoT architecture consisting of Internet-connected resource-constrained BLE devices.

  • To foster IoT innovation, we present a novel open hardware for BLE, the first of its kind.

  • We provide the open source Contiki operating system (O.S.) port for the new hardware.

  • We identify and discuss research challenges and opportunities in BLE-connected 6LoWPAN networks.

The rest of the article is structured as follows. The related work is highlighted is Section 2. We describe BLE connected IoT architecture and novel BLE features in Section 3. In Section 4, we present our new BLE hardware platform. Section 5 elaborates the Contiki O.S. port for our platform. Our identified open research challenges and opportunities in the BLE based IoT are discussed in Section 6 that is followed by the conclusions in Section 7.

Section snippets

Related work

Prior to the introduction of IPv6 capabilities in BLE in December 2014, there were previous efforts to use BLE in resource-constrained environments [6], [7], [8]. These solutions use the legacy BLE technology that can solve the local low-power connectively problems but cannot utilize the global end-to-end connectivity and security capabilities of BLE 4.2. Even the recent BLE based architectures [9], [10], [11] do not take advantage of the IPv6 connectivity.

Due to the Internet connectivity,

Bluetooth 4.2 and IoT architecture

BLE was introduced in Bluetooth 4.0, which allows power-efficient connections between Bluetooth devices that can run for months on cell-size batteries. Bluetooth 4.0 also adds the broadcast communication mode, in addition to the legacy connection-oriented pairing mode. A major class of applications still uses the connection mode between two devices such as a remote and a TV, a smartwatch and a smartphone, and a music player and a headset. Applications utilizing the broadcast mode can use the

Platform overview

In this section, we present the details of nRF24Cheep (Fig. 2), a custom designed BLE fakery platform that can be used as a research tool for BLE studies.

Porting Contiki OS to the platform

We port Contiki OS, a BSD-licensed operating system of small devices targeted at IoT [31], to the platform. Over the course of the last ten years, the Contiki project has gradually established a vibrant developer community, evidenced by the over 1200 forks on GitHub as of today [32].

Research challenges and opportunities

BLE is getting ready to attract a significant share in the billions of connected IoT devices; Ericsson’s and Cisco’s predict that there will be 50 billion connected device in the year 2020. In this section we highlight a number of research challenges that involve the BLE technology, which should be addressed before we can enjoy full advantages of BLE in the IoT. We recognize and reviewe the following problems and challenges: (i) secure and reliable mesh networking for BLE based 6LoWPAN

Conclusions

Bluetooth Low Energy is the lightweight variant of the standard Bluetooth protocol targeted for low-power resource-contained devices. The latest release of Bluetooth adds new capabilities in BLE that make it a suitable technology for low-power devices in the Internet of Things, but also exposes many limitations. This paper takes a first bite at the basic problem of the unavailability of an open platform for characterizing those limiting aspects, and presents a development framework for

Shahid Raza is a senior researcher at the SICS Swedish ICT Stockholm where he has been working since 2008. His research interests include but are not limited to security and privacy in IPv6-connected IoT, interconnection of computing clouds and IoT, WirelessHART, the smart grid, and storage security. Shahid is an associate editor of the premier IEEE IoT journal and a TPC member of a number of targeted IoT conferences and workshops. Shahid has completed his industrial PhD from the SICS Swedish

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    Shahid Raza is a senior researcher at the SICS Swedish ICT Stockholm where he has been working since 2008. His research interests include but are not limited to security and privacy in IPv6-connected IoT, interconnection of computing clouds and IoT, WirelessHART, the smart grid, and storage security. Shahid is an associate editor of the premier IEEE IoT journal and a TPC member of a number of targeted IoT conferences and workshops. Shahid has completed his industrial PhD from the SICS Swedish ICT Stockholm and the Mälardalen University Sweden in 2013. He also holds a Technology of Licentiate degree from the Mälardalen University, and a Master of Science degree from KTH The Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. See more at www.ShahidRaza.info

    Prasant Misra is a Scientist at TCS Research & Innovation in TATA Consultancy Services Ltd., Bangalore. He received his Ph.D. from the University of New South Wales, Sydney in 2012. His current research interests include low-power sensing/communication, signal processing and energy-efficient computing with a focus on system design for Cyber Physical Systems and Internet of Things. He has many years of experience in scientific and industrial research. His professional and research contributions have been recognized by numerous awards, of which it is noteworthy to mention the ERCIM Alain Bensoussan / Marie Curie Fellowship (2012) and the Australian Government’s AusAID Australian Leadership Awards (2008 ). He has also served on the organizing/technical committee of a number of international conferences. He is a senior member of IEEE, member of ACM, secretary of IEEE Computer Society (Bangalore Section), and an Associate Technical Editor of IEEE Communication Magazine.

    Zhitao He is a researcher at the Networked Embedded Systems group of SICS Swedish ICT and a PhD student at Uppsala University Sweden. He obtained his masters degree in electrical engineering from Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden in 2007, and has since worked in the NES group at SICS. His main research area is physical layer security and performance optimization of IoT devices. He enjoys development of embedded software on the Contiki operating system, which provides precise instrumentation of radio signals and manipulates network behaviors by means of packet injection. He has published a number of research papers in this topic.

    Thiemo Voigt leads the Networked Embedded Systems group at SICS. He is also a chaired professor at Uppsala University from where he obtained his PhD in 2002. His research interests are in low power wireless networks and systems. He has been TPC chair and track chair for a large number of internationally recognized conferences relevant for this proposal such as ACM/IEEE IPSN, IEEE MASS and IEEE ICDCS. He has co-authored more than 100 publications in journals and conferences. Papers he has co-authored have received awards at EWSN 2014 and 2015, ACM/IEEE IPSN in 2012 and 2013 as well as ExtremeCom 2013. Publications co-authored by Thiemo Voigt have been cited more than 7000 times according to Google scholar in February 2016.

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