Performance and Trade-offs of the new PHY Modes of BLE 5

With the release of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) version 5, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group introduced three additional physical (PHY) modes for BLE communication. These PHY modes enable an application to either double its throughput, or significantly improve its reliability, making BLE applicable to an even wider range of application domains. Unfortunately, no experimental study has yet investigated the actual performance of BLE 5’s PHY modes in BLE connections or shown their trade-offs between energy efficiency, reliability, and throughput. Thus, how to use BLE 5’s PHY modes to achieve specific application requirements is still an open question. To fill this gap, we experimentally study the performance of all four BLE 5 PHY modes in BLE connections and observe that it is, indeed, possible to double BLE’s throughput or to increase BLE’s reliability by using the new PHY modes. Furthermore, we provide guidelines using our measurements on how to select the most suitable PHY mode based on specific application requirements.