BLINK: Making the case for Bluetooth open source stack

Bluetooth is the de facto for IoT communication and the most prominent communication technology for smart homes and smart cities. Despite its design for small devices, e.g., computer mice, it evolved to support a wide range of applications. However, it still carries limitations like low data rate, inefficient device discovery, limited range, and interference. Addressing these aspects is impossible for the research community as Bluetooth core specifications are locked on hardware chips. In this work, we propose BLINK, a modified version on Bluetooth v4.0 that supports multicast communication elevating the data rate within a Bluetooth piconet. First, we provide an open source Bluetooth stack implementation to the research community. Second, we introduce multicasting to Bluetooth piconets through extending the set of packet formats. Third, we customize the Bluetooth timing to schedule an interference free communication of multicast streams between piconet devices. Fourth, we evaluate BLINK on a testbed of 4 devices and show that data exchange rate was enhanced by 1.5-3 folds.