Perpetual Bluetooth Communications for the IoT

Journal article (2021)

Authors

Qingzhi Liu Wageningen University & Research
Anass Drif Valk Welding B.V.
Przemysław Pawełczak Embedded Systems - EEMCS
Marco Zuniga Embedded Systems - EEMCS
Kasım Sinan Yıldırım Ege University, Università di Trento
Research Group
Embedded Systems (EEMCS) (TU Delft)
Bluetooth Internet of Things Radio frequency Energy harvesting
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Published Date

2021

Language

English

Reuse Rights

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Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Department

Software Technology

Research Group

Embedded Systems

Abstract

Battery-powered beacon devices introduce high maintenance costs due to the finite operation time dictated by the fixed capacity of their batteries. To tackle this problem we propose FreeBLE: an indoor beacon system aimed at operating perpetually without batteries. We propose three methods to increase the utilization efficiency of harvested Radio Frequency (RF) energy in the beacon system, by which the energy consumption level becomes low enough to fit within the energy harvesting budget. We implement FreeBLE using off-the-shelf Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and RF energy harvesting devices, and test FreeBLE in a laboratory environment. Our results show that FreeBLE enables perpetual operation in an indoor deployment of RF-powered BLE beacon devices.

Files

09151978.pdf
(.pdf | 1.71 Mb)