BLE-based Many-to-Many Data-Sharing for Internet-of-Things

Many-to-many data-sharing plays a very important role in the manifestation of distributed intelligence in IoT-based systems. In recent studies, Synchronous-Transmission (ST) based approaches have shown their superiority over the traditional Asynchronous-Transmission (AT) based ones. However, under ST, the physical layer of the network stack plays a significant role. Most of the ST-based studies are carried out assuming the underlying communication technology as IEEE 802.15.4. In this work, we carry out an explicit study of a few state-of-the-art ST-based many-to-many data-sharing strategies under BLE which is a very commonly available technology used for the physical layer in modern IoT-devices. In particular, we first redesign the selected strategies in a form that is suitable for comparison across different RF modes. Following this we rigorously compare the performance of the strategies under all the possible BLE modes in two different IoT-testbeds. Through extensive experimental studies, we demonstrate how the interaction between the protocols and the physical layer consequences substantially different outcomes under different networks. The summary of the study can serve as an effective guideline for the selection of the specific BLE mode and the right strategy for system-wide many-to-many/all-to-all data-sharing in IoT.