The newest version of the Bluetooth core specification, version 4.2, includes Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology and is enabling an explosion of new mobile, wearable, home, and industrial devices which can communicate with each other. Part of the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT), these devices require low power methods for forming mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs). In this work we present BLE Scatternet Battery-Aware Routing (BSBR), a power aware routing mechanism based on Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) which can be applied to BLE-based MANETs. Experiments utilizing actual BLE hardware implementing the new specification show that BSBR increases network lifetime by over 15% while increasing throughput performance by up to 50% compared to a traditional BLE-based MANET routing algorithm. By taking advantage of BLE features to produce high performance, energy efficient ad-hoc networks BSBR can potentially enable new applications and devices for the Internet of Things.
['Zonglin Guo', 'Ian G. Harris', 'Christopher B. Harris', 'Yutong Jiang', 'Lih-feng Tsaur']
A residual battery-aware routing algorithm based on DSR for BLE sensor networks