Bluetooth vs BLE-difference between Bluetooth and BLE(Bluetooth Low Energy)
This page Bluetooth vs BLE(Bluetooth Low Energy) covers difference between bluetooth and BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) technologies.The difference between various terms are also provided here.
Bluetooth and BLE(Bluetooth Low Energy) are Wireless Personal Area Network(WPAN) standards. Bluetooth Low Energy is developed to take care of sending small chunks of data. It's designed to run Internet of Things(IoT) devices using coin cells.
As we know bluetooth is used for network requiring data exchange as well as wireless headset and other consumer devices. BLE is used for applications such as mobile payment, healthcare, ticketing or access control. Both technology based devices are low cost. Both bluetooth and BLE networks consist of master and slave devices.
Bluetooth
It is a wireless technology around us in all the mobile devices. As we know using bluetooth we can transfer text files, photos, videos and more between mobile phones and other electronic devices. It operates in 2.4 GHz band and it forms PAN (Personal Area Network) for communication.
As bluetooth is a Connection Oriented technology, connection need
to be established first between bluetooth compliant devices before data transfer takes place.
The standard is managed by Bluetooth SIG.
There are various versions of bluetooth based on speed and coverage range.
Refer Bluetooth tutorial and versions.
BLE-Bluetooth Low Energy
Bluetooth version 4.0 is known as Bluetooth Low Energy or BLE. It is also referred by other names such as Bluetooth smart or Wibree. It is low power variation of original traditional bluetooth standard. Like Bluetooth, it is also managed and maintained by Bluetooth SIG. Due to low power consumption and low power sleep modes, BLE devices can be operated using coin cell for years.
It operates in the same band as standard bluetooth but uses different FHSS scheme.
As BLE devices are incompatible with standard bluetooth devices, they will not interoperate
with them. In order to have interoperability between classic or traditional bluetooth and
BLE devices dual mode devices having protocol stack of both need to be developed.
Dual mode BLE hardware chips have been developed by many vendors such as CSR, Broadcom,
Nordic semiconductor, EM Microelectronics, Texas Instruments etc.
Refer BLE basics.
Tabular difference between Bluetooth and BLE
Following table mentions difference between bluetooth and BLE technologies.
| Specifications | Bluetooth | BLE(Bluetooth Low Energy) |
|---|---|---|
| Network/Topology | Scatternet | Star Bus |
| Power consumption | Low (less than 30 mA) | Very Low (less than 15 mA) |
| Speed | 700 Kbps | 1 Mbps |
| Range | <30 m | 50 meters( 150 meters in open field) |
| RF Frequency band | 2400 MHz | 2400 MHz |
| Frequency Channels | 79 channels from 2.400 GHz to 2.4835 GHz with 1 MHz spacing | 40 channels from 2402MHz to 2480 MHz (includes 3 advertising and 37 data channels) |
| Modulation | GFSK (modulation index 0.35) , π/4 DQPSK, 8DPSK | GFSK (modulation index 0.5) |
| Latency in data transfer between two devices | Approx. 100 ms | Approx. 3 ms |
| Spreading | FHSS (1MHz channel) | FHSS (2MHz channel) |
| Link layer | TDMA | TDMA |
| message size(bytes) | 358 (Max) | 8 to 47 |
| Error detection/correction | 8 bit CRC(header), 16 bit CRC, 2/3 FEC(payload), ACKs | 24 bit CRC, ACKs |
| Security | 64b/128b, user defined application layer | 128 bits AES, user defined application layer |
| Application throughput | 0.7 to 2.1 Mbps | less than 0.3 Mbps |
| Nodes/Active Slaves | 7 | Unlimited |
Bluetooth BLE Related Links
Also refer bluetooth tutorial covering following sub topics:
Main Page
Frequency
PHY Layer
MAC layer
Stack
Power classes
Security
products
versions
Bluetooth Vs BLE
BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) Links
➤Bluetooth v4.2 versus v5.0 >>
➤Bluetooth v5.0 versus v5.1 >>
➤BLE states and state diagram >>
➤BLE advertising and data channels >>
➤BLE protocol stack architecture >>
➤BLE connection process >>
➤BLE advertising and data packet formats >>
What is Difference between
Following are useful difference between terminologies on various wireless standards/technologies.
difference between FDM and OFDM
Difference between SC-FDMA and OFDM
Difference between SISO and MIMO
Difference between TDD and FDD
Difference between 802.11 standards viz.11-a,11-b,11-g and 11-n
OFDM vs OFDMA
CDMA vs GSM
Bluetooth vs zigbee
IoT Wireless Technologies
➤WLAN
➤THREAD
➤EnOcean
➤LoRa
➤SIGFOX
➤WHDI
➤Zigbee
➤6LoWPAN
➤Zigbee RF4CE
➤Z-Wave
➤NFC
➤RFID
➤INSTEON