Dual-protocol support for Bluetooth LE devices

Low energy consumption is one of the primary issues that have to be addressed in body area networks to prevent frequent battery recharges in the nodes. Such networks are being increasingly used to acquire sensory data that need to be processed in real-time. The Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol is an attractive solution for implementing personal area networks with reduced energy consumption, also because it is supported by consumer devices such as tablets and smart phones; however, it cannot guarantee a bounded delay for managing real-time traffic. This paper overcomes such a limitation by presenting a bandwidth sharing mechanism that allows partitioning the available network bandwidth between the BLE and another user-defined protocol built on top of the raw radio transceiver. Experimental results are also reported to characterize the timing behavior of the dual protocol on a specific platform.