Bluetooth Low Energy, or Bluetooth LE,
is a wireless communication protocol
that was designed to consume significantly less power
at the cost of somewhat lower data rates
compared to Bluetooth Classic.
Introduced in Bluetooth 4.0, this design choice
was made to support highly mobile applications
such as health care, audio, industrial automation,
and localization.
In this video, we will talk about the challenges associated
with Bluetooth LE and take a deep dive
into a few key applications.
We will also demonstrate how to use MATLAB and MathWorks
Bluetooth Toolbox to design, simulate, and test
Bluetooth LE as part of your wireless system design.
Although Bluetooth LE holds many advantages over Bluetooth
Classic, system designers still need
to address certain Bluetooth LE modeling challenges.
Bluetooth LE occupies the same 2.4 gigahertz band as WLAN
requiring Bluetooth engineers to ensure coexistence
with WLAN networks.
Scheduling is also a major consideration
in Bluetooth systems, due to latency and other quality
of service requirements.
Using MATLAB and Bluetooth Toolbox,
you can simulate and analyze Bluetooth LE network
performance with and without WLAN interference.
You can visualize Bluetooth channel sensing
and adaptive frequency hopping in the presence of WLAN
interference, as shown here.
One key application of Bluetooth LE
is in locating sensors or nodes in 3D environments
by computing the angle of arrival and departure
from locator.
A single locator can identify position using a range
and angle calculation, while multiple locator
nodes allow for more precise positioning
through triangulation.
This low power position and capability
can be used for applications such as equipment tracking
and warehouses, indoor pedestrian navigation
in an airport, or connected vehicles.
Using MATLAB and Bluetooth Toolbox,
you can design and simulate components of positioning
in an environment with real world RF impairments, path
loss, and noise.
You can apply those simulations to calculate
node positions using angle of arrival and angle
of departure techniques.
Bluetooth Toolbox enables data fusion
with Kalman filtering to improve positioning accuracy
over traditional Bluetooth.
Mesh Networking is another application
of Bluetooth LE that uses a decentralized system
of Bluetooth LE devices in a network.
It utilizes managed flooding to transmit messages
along devices in range keeping the system robust to single
or even multiple points of failure.
Bluetooth Mesh offers an inexpensive, highly reliable,
and scalable communication model,
and is found in applications such as network lighting
control, health care facilities, and smart industry.
Using MATLAB and Bluetooth Toolbox,
you can design a Bluetooth LE mesh network,
configure spatially aware node positions,
and visualize packet flow between nodes.
You can also simulate mesh networks
to determine critical nodes and to manage flooding scenario.
LE Audio is the next generation of Bluetooth audio, which
enables low power audio networks to be built and designed
for residential and industrial environments
as pictured in this 3D floor plan.
It includes new features such as Isochronous Channels and Low
Complexity Communication Codec to provide greater audio
quality compared to previous Bluetooth Codec standards.
LE Audio has enabled the creation of new Bluetooth
applications such as multi-stream audio, personal
and location based audio sharing,
and support for hearing aids.
Using MATLAB and Bluetooth Toolbox,
you can simulate an audio broadcast network
in a variety of environments, you
can configure broadcast isochronous groups defined
by the synchronized links between one central node
and up to 31 peripheral nodes.
Once you have specified your BIG parameters,
you can add impairments and visualize the packet delivery
ratio of your simulated LE system on a heatmap.
For more information about Bluetooth LE,
explore the Bluetooth Toolbox product page.
To learn more about how Bluetooth LE can
be applied to your wireless communications system design,
explore the wireless communications solutions page.