Multi-Connection Scheduling for Resource Fairness in Bluetooth Low Energy Networks

Abstract

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is positioned as a representative wireless technology in Internet of Things (IoT) applications and systems. It enables communication with multiple device at low-power and includes diverse features for providing various services with high-quality. However, the Bluetooth specification does not specify the resource management and scheduling mechanisms for multiple connections. Since each connection is independently handled, achieving optimized schedule is an important research topic in Bluetooth networks. To address these challenges, we propose a Fair Multi-Connection Scheduling(FM-Schedule), which schedules and allocates resources for new connections taking into account the requirements of previously connected peripherals. We implements FM-Schedule on real embedded devices, and evaluate its performance compared to popular BLE stacks (i.g. NimBLE, Zephyr OS, and Nordic) in real environment. © 2023 IEEE.