Building the Internet of Things with bluetooth smart

The Internet of Things, or the IoT, is an emerging, disruptive technology that enables physical devices to communicate across disparate networks. IP has been the de facto standard for seamless interconnectivity in the traditional Internet; and piggybacking on the success of IP, 6LoWPAN has been the first standardized technology to realize it for networks of resource-constrained devices. In the recent past Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) a.k.a Bluetooth Smart - a subset of the Bluetooth v4.0 and the latest v4.2 stack, has surfaced as an appealing alternative, with many competing advantages over available low-power communication technologies in the IoT space such as IEEE 802.15.4. However, BLE is a closed standard and lacks open hardware and firmware support, something that hinders innovation and development in this field. In this article, we aim to overcome some of the constraints in BLE's core building blocks by making three contributions: first, we present the design of a new open hardware platform for BLE; second, we provide a Contiki O.S. port for the new platform; and third, we identify research challenges and opportunities in 6LoWPAN-connected Bluetooth Smart. We believe that the knowledge and insights will facilitate IoT innovations based on this promising technology.