Synchronous transmissions on Bluetooth 5 and IEEE 802.15.4 – A replication study

Romain Jacob, Anna-Brit Schaper, Andreas Biri, Reto Da Forno, Lothar Thiele

Abstract:

Synchronous transmissions (ST ) is a wireless communication technique that has been shown to be particularly efficient in low-power multi-hop networks. Since 2011, research on ST mainly focused on the physical layer defined by the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. Nowadays, Bluetooth is another pervasive technology embedded by default in almost all connected objects; researchers recently started to investigate whether the benefits of ST also apply to Bluetooth.

This paper presents the results of a replication study of ST using the popular and low-cost nRF52840 Dongle, which supports all modes of the Bluetooth 5 standard as well as IEEE 802.15.4. We measure the packet reception rate for different parameters known to affect ST for all physical layers supported by the platform. We use a data exploration application that allows to extract useful information from the measurements and uncover new insights. We confirm that ST is viable on Bluetooth, as previously shown. Moreover, our data show that successful ST on Bluetooth cannot be explained by “constructive interference” or capture effect alone: multiple effects interplay in a way that is not yet fully understood.

Keywords: synchronous transmissions, nRF52840, bluetooth, 802.15.4, experiments

TL;DR: This paper presents an experimental campaign comparing the performance of synchronous transmissions on Bluetooth and IEEE 802.15.4 using the nRF52840 platform.