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Bluetooth LE: Advertising, GATT & BLE Mesh

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Bluetooth LE: radio designed for coin-cell lifetimes

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE, Bluetooth 4.0+) shares the 2.4 GHz ISM band with classic Bluetooth and WiFi but is an entirely different protocol optimized for power over throughput. A BLE sensor can run for years on a coin cell by sleeping almost all the time and waking only to advertise or exchange a few bytes.

BLE has two channel types: 3 advertising channels for discovery and broadcasting, and 37 data channels for connected communication with frequency hopping. Most IoT devices — smartwatches, beacons, medical sensors, door locks — use BLE.

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