A Comparison and Evaluation of Different BLE Connection Methods for Wearable Devices

Abstract

Internet of Thing (IoT) is growing rapidly with more devices connected to the Internet. One emerging group of these is called wearable devices. The wireless technologies used by wearable devices need to consider the long lasting of battery life. Consequently, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) has emerged as the wireless technologies for wearable devices due to its features of low power consumption. In this research we focus on enabling technologies that will facilitate seamless communications between the wearable devices and the oneM2M platform based on BLE. We evaluate three different designs: (1) IPE (Inter-working Proxy Application Entity), (2) RESTful BLE and (3) 6LoWPAN over BLE. Our research compares and evaluates the main features and behaviors of these three designs and investigates key performance indicators of each such as power consumption, system performance, transmission efficiency and design complexity. With our research we are able to determine which specific design is most suitable for wearable devices under different system design requirements.