BLE Packet Timing Discovery for Power Reduction
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) scanning devices must continuously listen for advertisement packets due to unknown pseudorandom delay times, leading to high power consumption and inefficiency.
Innovation Solution
Implementing packet transmission timing parameter discovery to synchronize listening times with BLE advertising devices, allowing receiving devices to determine and use pseudorandom delay times, reducing the need for continuous listening and conserving power.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional BLE scanning devices continuously listen for advertisement packets, then packet reception reliability is improved, but power consumption increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The scanning device performs preliminary actions by discovering packet transmission timing parameters from received advertisement packets, including pseudorandom delay values and fixed interval values. This preliminary discovery enables the device to calculate expected transmission times in advance, allowing it to enter low-power states between anticipated packet arrivals rather than continuously listening, thus resolving the contradiction between reliable reception and power consumption
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback by using the discovered timing parameters to continuously refine and adjust the listening schedule. The scanning device uses the pseudorandom delay and fixed interval values to predict when the next packet will arrive, creating a feedback loop that optimizes the listening window timing and duration, ensuring reliable reception while minimizing active listening time and associated power consumption
2Measurement precision
If BLE scanning devices use continuous scanning to ensure packet reception, then synchronization accuracy is improved, but processing time and bandwidth are wasted
Solution Approach 1:
The invention extracts only the essential timing information (pseudorandom delay value and fixed interval value) from the advertisement packets, separating this critical synchronization data from other packet contents. By extracting just these timing parameters, the device achieves accurate synchronization without the need to continuously process and analyze entire packet streams, thereby reducing processing time and bandwidth consumption while maintaining synchronization accuracy
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of performing complete continuous scanning, the device applies partial action by listening only during calculated listening windows based on discovered timing parameters. This partial listening approach provides sufficient synchronization accuracy for the application while dramatically reducing the processing time and bandwidth that would be consumed by exhaustive continuous scanning of all possible transmission times
3Reliability
If pseudorandom delay time is added to advertisement packet transmission, then transmission security and anti-collision are improved, but receiving device's ability to predict transmission times deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The invention introduces an intermediary approach by having the scanning device actively discover the pseudorandom delay value and fixed interval value from the advertisement packets themselves. Rather than relying on the transmitting device to provide this information directly or requiring continuous scanning, the intermediary discovery process extracts these timing parameters from the packet timing patterns, enabling the receiver to predict future transmission times despite the pseudorandom nature of the delays, thus maintaining both security and predictability
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods are provided that allow a BLE scanning device or other receiving device to use packet transmission timing parameter discovery to synchronize its listening times to the actual packet transmission times from a transmitting device such as a BLE advertising device. Once discovered, the packet transmission timing parameter/s may be used by the receiving device to calculate the same pseudorandom delay time component (such as BLE advDelay) that is being used by the transmitting device to determine intervals between the transmitted packets. This allows the receiving device to calculate the exact time that the transmitting device is transmitting each packet, so that the receiving device may synchronize its listening times to coincide with the packet transmitting intervals used by the transmitting device.