{"id":8706,"date":"2023-05-19T07:48:37","date_gmt":"2023-05-19T07:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beaconzone.co.uk\/blog\/?p=8706"},"modified":"2023-05-19T07:48:39","modified_gmt":"2023-05-19T07:48:39","slug":"bluetooth-4-vs-bluetooth-5-range","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beaconzone.co.uk\/blog\/bluetooth-4-vs-bluetooth-5-range\/","title":{"rendered":"Bluetooth 4 vs Bluetooth 5 Range"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Mohammad Afaneh has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/posts\/mafaneh_experimental-performance-evaluation-of-ble-activity-7063210523865071616-YMrx\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">unearthed (LinkedIn)<\/a> a paper by researchers at Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu Finland and Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, Finland on Experimental Performance Evaluation of BLE 4 vs BLE 5 in Indoors and Outdoors Scenarios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bluetooth 5 promises x4 improvement in range over Bluetooth 4. The researchers set up indoor and outdoor experiments to determine the real-life performance. Tests used the Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 SoC.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.beaconzone.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/bluetooth5testing.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8707\" width=\"439\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.beaconzone.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/bluetooth5testing.jpg 585w, https:\/\/www.beaconzone.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/bluetooth5testing-300x239.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 439px) 85vw, 439px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p>The results showed a x2 improvement in line-of-sight range outdoors and up to 20% improvement in non line-of-sight indoors. For example, for Bluetooth 4, with 0 dBm transmit power, the maximum range was 220m. For Bluetooth 5, with 0 dBm transmit power, the communications range was found to be 490m. A x4 range improvement was not achieved in most scenarios and the only situation where this was achieved was when using Bluetooth 5 coded mode with increased (9dBm) transmit power.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.beaconzone.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/bluetooth5testingresults.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8709\" width=\"502\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.beaconzone.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/bluetooth5testingresults.png 502w, https:\/\/www.beaconzone.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/bluetooth5testingresults-300x269.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 502px) 85vw, 502px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beaconzone.co.uk\/blog\/bluetooth-5-support\/\" target=\"_blank\">still the case<\/a> that very few beacons support the Bluetooth 5 features. This is mainly because there are very few smartphones with which they can be used. Another observation is that the +9dBm used in the above tests isn&#8217;t practical for most battery-based solutions and instead it&#8217;s more normal to run at 0dBm or less power. The range also depends on the sending and receiving hardware and antennas. In the extreme case, we have seen a non-battery powered Bluetooth 4 device achieve 4Km line-of-sight range.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The paper also tests the throughput which we haven&#8217;t mentioned in this post. Throughput implies GATT connection which isn&#8217;t relevant in the context of using beacons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The PDF paper is also available at <a href=\"http:\/\/jultika.oulu.fi\/files\/nbnfi-fe2019052817426.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">jultika.oulu.fi<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mohammad Afaneh has unearthed (LinkedIn) a paper by researchers at Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu Finland and Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, Finland on Experimental Performance Evaluation of BLE 4 vs BLE 5 in Indoors and Outdoors Scenarios. Bluetooth 5 promises x4 improvement in range over Bluetooth 4. The researchers set &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.beaconzone.co.uk\/blog\/bluetooth-4-vs-bluetooth-5-range\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Bluetooth 4 vs Bluetooth 5 Range&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beaconzone.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beaconzone.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beaconzone.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beaconzone.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beaconzone.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8706"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.beaconzone.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8722,"href":"https:\/\/www.beaconzone.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8706\/revisions\/8722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beaconzone.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beaconzone.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beaconzone.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}