Comparison of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Wi-Fi, Serial and 5G in IoMT

Nina Pearl Doe, Stefan Scharoba, Marc Reichenbach, Christian Herglotz

2025

Abstract

With the inception of Industry 4.0, incorporating technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) into healthcare has become essential. This integration is commonly referred to as the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). The IoMT is the connection of medical devices using wired or wireless data transmission technology to allow data exchange with the goal of improving the overall healthcare delivery. Despite the numerous advantages that IoMT brings into the healthcare process, there are potential performance challenges that may occur if factors such as data quality and reliability of the IoT devices in different environmental settings are not properly considered. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the performance of connected medical IoT devices that are used for heartrate monitoring based on the aforementioned factors. The setup of the IoMT consists of sensor nodes, which transmit the Electrocardiogram (ECG) data through a multi-protocol gateway to a central server for further data processing. This paper presents the performance analysis of the comparison of four communication technologies: Serial (UART), Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Wi-Fi, and 5G NR for real-time ECG monitoring applications, while taking notice of environmental factors that may affect performance. The sensor data transmission is evaluated based on round trip time (RTT) latency, ensuring a desirable throughput and minimal or no data loss. The data readings were taken at varying distances (0.1m to 17m) and sampling rates (300Hz and 1000Hz). The experimental results show that while Serial communication achieves the lowest latency (3.96ms - 4.37ms), Wi-Fi demonstrates consistent Gateway-Server performance (40ms - 60ms RTT), 5G excels in short-range communication (1.8ms - 2.0ms Sensor Node-Gateway RTT), and BLE provides balanced performance (4.86ms - 7.57ms latency). Wi-Fi performed better in long-range scenarios (43.48ms -66.23ms RTT) and maintaining stable performance at longer ranges while 5G shows superior performance in short-range, high-frequency scenarios.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Doe N., Scharoba S., Reichenbach M. and Herglotz C. (2025). Comparison of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Wi-Fi, Serial and 5G in IoMT. In Proceedings of the 18th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - Volume 2: HEALTHINF; ISBN 978-989-758-731-3, SciTePress, pages 859-866. DOI: 10.5220/0013321500003911

in Bibtex Style

@conference{healthinf25,
author={Nina Doe and Stefan Scharoba and Marc Reichenbach and Christian Herglotz},
title={Comparison of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Wi-Fi, Serial and 5G in IoMT},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 18th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - Volume 2: HEALTHINF},
year={2025},
pages={859-866},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013321500003911},
isbn={978-989-758-731-3},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 18th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - Volume 2: HEALTHINF
TI - Comparison of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Wi-Fi, Serial and 5G in IoMT
SN - 978-989-758-731-3
AU - Doe N.
AU - Scharoba S.
AU - Reichenbach M.
AU - Herglotz C.
PY - 2025
SP - 859
EP - 866
DO - 10.5220/0013321500003911
PB - SciTePress