Applications of BLE in IoT

In the past five years, the work in the Internet of Things is significant in comparison to the previous times. Many manufacturers and start-ups are focusing on this technology in order to make accessories for the smartphones. The reason manufacturers are more focused towards the BLE as compared to any other technology is that they want to increase the adaptability of their IoT devices. As most of the smartphones exist have Bluetooth technology in it, the adoption rate of these accessories is tremendous as compared to any other standard. People want to use their smartphones to control and interact with things. It would be great if they can control the bedroom light from their smartphone or turn off the stove from their cell phone.

The promity sensing, indoor navigation, fitness tracking and other countless applications have already found their way in the Bluetooth Low Energy. Users do not have to sacrifies the battery life while enjoying the connection with their favorite IoT devices. At this moment, it is not clear if the future of IoT lies in the combination of several wireless standards in one device (for example, combining Wi-Fi and BLE both in a single device) or there should be one stand-alone standard which is the master of everything. It is sensible to predict that there is no significant loss if there are multiple standards in one device as the architecture and technology become cheaper. The companies in consumer electronics will not hesitate to go to multi-standard solutions in the longer run.

Bluetooth World event organized by Bluetooth SIG in Santa Clara, United States

Companies like Google, Apple, and Intel are already backing up the BLE standard. The progress and the agreement of the industry can be seen in the work of the Bluetooth SIG because as of June 2016, SIG announced a new version of BLE as Bluetooth 5. Quadrupling the range and doubling the speed will make Bluetooth Low Energy compete more aggressively in the market. In Bluetooth World 2016, which is an annual event organized by the Special Interest Group, many manufacturers were present to show their products. It showed the persity how companies are changing the way we think about Bluetooth technology. CSRMesh which is acquired by Qualcomm, showed off their mesh technology built over Bluetooth to take this standard to another level and truly threat ZigBee as it is the only standard that provides a low powered mesh architecture.