Simulation of network-level performance for Bluetooth Low Energy

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a recently developed energy-efficient short-range radio communication technology, which is currently vastly gaining popularity and which might become an enabler for implementing in practice the Internet of Things (IoT) concept. However, the complexity of the protocol and the lack of the simulation tools impedes the studies of BLE network performance. For this reason, in the paper we introduce the novel simulation tool, which is capable of simulating the communication in the networks of BLE devices. In the paper we discuss the capabilities and limitations of the suggested tool and compare the results of the simulations with the ones obtained with the real-life hardware BLE transceivers. Also, the paper highlights some of the results obtained with the developed tool, which disclose the effect of the communication parameters on the performance of the BLE protocol in the multi-node scenarios and point out few weak points of the BLE technology.