Enhanced-BLE: A Hybrid BLE-ESB Framework for Dynamically Reconfigurable and Energy-Efficient 2.4 GHz IoT Communication

2026-05-20

AI Summary

This work addresses the limitations of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) in bursty and on-demand sensing scenarios—namely high wake-up latency and the trade-off between throughput and energy efficiency—as well as the lack of reliable bidirectional communication in Enhanced ShockBurst (ESB), despite its efficiency. To overcome these challenges, the authors propose Enhanced-BLE, a hybrid framework that integrates BLE and ESB protocols on a unified Nordic nRF54L15 hardware platform. By introducing adaptive RF scheduling, coexistence-aware connection management, and dynamic protocol switching, the framework enables seamless collaboration between the two protocols for the first time. Experimental results demonstrate approximately 2× higher forward throughput, nearly 20× reductions in both wake-up latency and energy consumption, an 18 ms BLE/ESB switching latency, and a 49 ms recovery time to resume BLE operations from standby—all while ensuring low latency, high energy efficiency, and significantly improved communication reliability and throughput.

Abstract

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is widely used in IoT systems because of its low power consumption, interoperability, and reliable bidirectional communication. However, its connection-oriented architecture introduces trade-offs among wake-up latency, throughput, and energy efficiency, limiting its suitability for burst-mode and on-demand sensing applications. Enhanced ShockBurst (ESB), a lightweight connectionless protocol supported by the same 2.4 GHz Nordic Semiconductor hardware, enables fast wake-up and efficient data transmission, but does not provide BLE-level robustness for sustained bidirectional communication. This work systematically benchmarks BLE and ESB on a unified Nordic nRF54L15 platform and proposes Enhanced-BLE, a hybrid framework that integrates the two protocols to extend conventional BLE operation. Experimental results show that ESB nearly halves packet transmission time and energy compared with BLE, doubles the achievable forward throughput, and reduces wake-up latency and energy by nearly twentyfold during intermittent operation. However, ESB reverse transmission may suffer packet loss, whereas BLE maintains reliable bidirectional communication. Enhanced-BLE addresses this trade-off through adaptive radio scheduling and coexistence-aware connection management, combining ESB-based high-throughput forward transmission with BLE-based reliable reverse communication. The framework enables BLE-to-ESB handover within approximately 18 ms and restores BLE operation within 49 ms from standby mode. Enhanced-BLE also achieves approximately twofold higher forward throughput than BLE while reducing wake-up latency. These results demonstrate a practical and hardware-compatible strategy for low-latency, high-throughput, energy-efficient, and reliable 2.4 GHz IoT communication.

Problem

• Bluetooth Low Energy
• Enhanced ShockBurst
• IoT communication
• energy efficiency
• wake-up latency

Innovation

• Enhanced-BLE
• hybrid BLE-ESB
• adaptive radio scheduling
• energy-efficient IoT communication
• low-latency 2.4 GHz