Analysis of energy consumption of Bluetooth Low Energy versus Bluetooth Classic

BLE was designed as a super low bitrate intermittent protocol, and named with that application in mind. It was designed to spend 99% of its time "asleep".

Not too surprising it's similar power to Classic when doing similar things.

But also, a good study to actually measure it!

Re: Analysis of energy consumption of Bluetooth Low Energy versus Bluetooth Classic

#6

Post by szundi » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 6:36 PM UTC

They found usecases when classic is better.

BLE is very good for operating a sensor or a beacon for years on a coin cell. That’s why it’s so popular.

Also because of the easier api/interface to exchange data compared to the classic bluetooth.

Re: Analysis of energy consumption of Bluetooth Low Energy versus Bluetooth Classic

#7

Post by Denvercoder9 » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 6:38 PM UTC

Its important to note that this study has only tested one Bluetooth stack.

Re: Analysis of energy consumption of Bluetooth Low Energy versus Bluetooth Classic

#8

Post by amq » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 6:41 PM UTC

Note that this is a bachelor thesis based on testing of a single product (Jody-W263). Probably shouldn't be quoted now as 'universal truth'.

Re: Analysis of energy consumption of Bluetooth Low Energy versus Bluetooth Classic

#9

Post by keybuk » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

This is about the newer LE 2M PHY, which was added for "replacing Classic" (which is 2-3M) use cases. It's not surprising that it's not as efficient as the more widely used 1M PHY.

Re: Analysis of energy consumption of Bluetooth Low Energy versus Bluetooth Classic

#10

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 6:53 PM UTC

yunohn wrote: post #4

That’s… odd? I would’ve assumed that LE was designed with both theory and practical testing - how could classic be better at everything?

As other comments note, this appears to only examine power use under load and LE is meant to idle at extremely low power. So it's worth knowing but not super meaningful that LE isn't more power efficient when in use, because that wasn't the point. (Also this assumes that the conclusion is true in the general case, which is unknown since they didn't test many implementations and BT has painfully wide variation in implementations)