The paper looks at the current state of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) as a communication platform to connect resource-constrained devices to the Internet, and presents a purportedly first-of-its-kind open hardware and open-source port definition to accelerate development in this space. The authors argue BLE technology, with its ubiquitous out-of-the-box support in most smartphones, has immense potential to surpass IEEE 802.15.4 as the technology of choice for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. However, the lack of an open standards-based architecture for the wireless aspect of BLE IoT implementations presents challenges and stifles innovation.

Raza et al. adequately describe the Bluetooth 4.2 improvements with respect to IoT applications--marketed as Bluetooth Smart--in the areas of packet size and speed, security, privacy, and power consumption. The paper presents and breaks down with excellent detail the functionality of a custom designed BLE beacon platform intended for experimentation and research. The major hardware components and associated wireless communication packet formats are well outlined. This is followed by a comprehensive discussion of a port for the Contiki operating system (OS)--a Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) OS targeted at IoT small devices--that the authors devised for the new platform in an attempt to address certain limitations of another existing port for a similar platform. The authors close with highlights of numerous challenges that they reason must be overcome for BLE in IoT to reach its full potential.

In short, the paper accomplishes its goal of exposing the limitations of the latest iteration of BLE in IoT applications, as well as presenting a framework to explore ways of overcoming shortcomings through open platform developments.