Bluetooth Low Energy Applications
Chapter 1 • Introduction Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a complex technology, but the basics are quite accessible. In this book, you’ll learn how to: • • • • • •
discover BLE devices in the neighborhood by listening to their advertisements create your own BLE devices advertising data connect to BLE devices such as heart rate monitors and proximity reporters create secure connections to BLE devices with encryption and authentication understand BLE service and profile specifications and implement them reverse engineer a BLE device with a proprietary implementation and control it with your own software • reverse engineer a BLE device with a proprietary implementation and control it with your own software • make your BLE devices use as little power as possible This chapter introduces Bluetooth Low Energy and its advantages. It also lists the software and hardware platforms used in this book, as well as the reasons to choose them.
1.1 What is Bluetooth Low Energy? Bluetooth is a wireless communication standard in the 2.4 GHz Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) frequency band. These days, if you hear about Bluetooth support in a product, it is almost always Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). It’s a radical departure from the original Bluetooth standard, which is now called Classic Bluetooth. Bluetooth Low Energy and Classic Bluetooth are actually different protocols. Classic Bluetooth is essentially a wireless version of the traditional serial connection. If you want to print a document, transfer a file or stream audio, you want this to happen as fast as possible. Therefore, the focus of development in Classic Bluetooth was on attaining faster and faster speeds with every new version. However, Classic Bluetooth wasn’t a good fit for devices with low power consumption, for instance those powered by batteries. That’s why Nokia adapted the Bluetooth standard to enable it to work in low-power scenarios. In 2006, they released their resulting technology onto the market, dubbed Wibree. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), the organization that maintains the Bluetooth specifications, showed interest in this new development. After consulting with Nokia, they decided to adopt Wibree as part of Bluetooth 4.0, with the new name, Bluetooth Low Energy. Classic Bluetooth remained available for high-throughput applications. Note: In practice, many chipsets support both Classic Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy, especially in laptops and smartphones.
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