Bluetooth Low Energy Characterization on Android Devices

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a wireless communication protocol in the 2.4GHz spectrum. The protocol is a pared-down version of the Bluetooth Classic protocol that provides new communication methods at extraordinarily low energy. BLE is ubiquitous and can be found in almost any device; in particular, it is commonplace in smartphones. Android smartphones, specifically, suffer from a fragmentation problem amongst the operating systems found in the wild as well as an issue with extraordinary variability in hardware. This diverse operating environment for BLE calls for evaluation to better understand how BLE performs at the application layer, especially in the presence of 2.4GHz Wi-Fi interference. My investigations into connection-less and connection-oriented BLE communication on a variety of Android smartphones have illustrated disparate BLE behavior across devices, unequal impacts from ambient and parallel interfering traffic, and an updated understanding of what BLE traffic looks like on modern smartphones.