Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) plays an important role in the Internet of Things (IoT), including retail, medical, smart home and other fields.
Among them, bluetooth electronic shelf tags are a good example of Bluetooth Low Energy applications. Why is Bluetooth Low Energy chosen by IoT applications such as electronic tags? Let's take a closer look at the features of Bluetooth Low Energy
1. Low Power
From its appearance to its usage, Bluetooth Low Energy aims to reduce power consumption. In order to reduce power consumption, most Bluetooth Low Energy devices are in a dormant state. When an activity occurs, the device is awakened and starts working, and then goes back to sleep after the work is completed. This is why it consumes less power than traditional Bluetooth.
2. Stability, security and reliability
Bluetooth Low Energy technology uses the same adaptive frequency hopping (AFH) technology as traditional Bluetooth technology. In order to minimize the cost and power consumption of using AFH, Bluetooth Low Energy technology has reduced the number of channels from 79 1 MHz wide channels of traditional Bluetooth technology to 40 2 MHz wide channels.
3. Wireless Coexistence
Bluetooth technology uses the unlicensed 2.4GHz ISM band. Because there are too many technologies sharing this radio wave space, wireless performance will be degraded due to error correction and repeated transmission caused by interference (such as increased latency and reduced throughput). In demanding applications, interference can be reduced through frequency planning and special antenna design. Because both traditional Bluetooth and low-power Bluetooth use AFH, a technology that minimizes interference from other radio technologies, Bluetooth transmission has excellent stability and reliability.
4. Connection Range
The modulation of Bluetooth Low Energy technology is slightly different from that of traditional Bluetooth technology. This different modulation achieves a connection range of up to 300 meters with a 10dB wireless chipset (the maximum power of low-power Bluetooth).
5. Ease of Use and Integration
Bluetooth Low Energy is generally based on a master device connected to multiple slave devices. The master device controls the communication frequency of the slave devices, and the slave devices can only communicate according to the requirements of the master device. Compared with traditional Bluetooth technology, a new feature added to Bluetooth Low Energy is the "broadcast" function. With this feature, the slave device can tell the master device that it needs to send data (broadcast messages also include activities or measurements).
In the case of electronic tags, Bluetooth Low Energy enables electronic tags to receive updates on product information in real time and accurately. In addition, the communication range similar to traditional Bluetooth enables retailers to easily deploy and update a large number of electronic tags and improve operational efficiency.
As the Internet of Things technology continues to develop and mature, the combination of BLE technology and electronic tags will provide retailers with more innovation opportunities.
