Comparison of Bluetooth BR/EDR and Bluetooth LE Specifications

Bluetooth^® technology [1], operating on the 2.4 GHz unlicensed industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) frequency band, uses low-power radio frequency to enable short-range communication at a low cost. The two variants of the Bluetooth technology are –

• Bluetooth basic rate/enhanced data rate (BR/EDR) or classic Bluetooth

• Bluetooth low energy (LE) or Bluetooth Smart

The Bluetooth Core Specification [2], specified by the Special Interest Group (SIG) consortium, defines the technologies required to create interoperable Bluetooth BR/EDR and Bluetooth LE devices.

Bluetooth BR/EDR radio is primarily designed for low power, high data throughput operations. In Bluetooth BR/EDR, the radio hops in a pseudo-random way on 79 designated Bluetooth channels. Each Bluetooth BR/EDR channel has a bandwidth of 1 MHz. Each frequency is located at (2402 + k) MHz, where k = 0,1, …, 78.

In 2010, the SIG introduced Bluetooth LE with the Bluetooth 4.0 version. The Bluetooth LE radio is designed and optimized to support applications and use cases that have a relatively low duty cycle. For example, suppose a person wears a heart rate monitoring device for several hours. Because this device transmits only a few bytes of data every second, its radio is in the 'on' state for a very short period of time. In Bluetooth LE, the operating radio frequency is in the range from 2.4000 GHz to 2.4835 GHz. The channel bandwidth is 2 MHz, and the operating band is divided into 40 channels, (k = 0, 1, …, 39). The center frequency of the kth channel is located at (2402 + k × 2) MHz.

This table summarizes and compares different features of Bluetooth BR/EDR and Bluetooth LE.

Feature	Bluetooth BR/EDR	Bluetooth LE
Frequency band	Operates on a 2.4 GHz Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) band, with the values in the range from 2.4000 GHz to 2.4835 GHz	Operates on 2.4 GHz ISM band, with the values in the range from 2.4000 GHz to 2.4835 GHz
Channels	79 channels	40 channels (37 data channels and 3 advertising channels)
Channel bandwidth	1 MHz	2 MHz
Spread spectrum technique	1600 hops/sec frequency-hopping spread spectrum (FHSS)	FHSS
Modulation scheme	Gaussian frequency shift keying (GFSK) π/4 differential quadrature phase shift keying (DQPSK) 8 differential phase shift keying (DPSK)	GFSK
Power usage	1 W (reference value)	~0.01x W to 0.5x W of reference (depending on the use case scenario)
Maximum transmission power	Class 1: 100 mW (20 dBm) Class 2: 2.5 mW (4 dBm) Class 3: 1 mW (0 dBm)	Class 1: 100 mW (20 dBm) Class 1.5: 10 mW (10 dBm) Class 2: 2.5 mW (4 dBm) Class 3: 1 mW (0 dBm)
Data rate	BR PHY (GFSK): 1 Mb/s EDR PHY (π/4 DQPSK): 2 Mb/s EDR PHY (8 DPSK): 3 Mb/s	LE Coded PHY (S = 8): 125 Kb/s LE Coded PHY (S = 2): 500 Kb/s LE 1M PHY: 1 Mb/s LE 2M PHY: 2 Mb/s
Device discovery	Inquiry or paging	Advertising
Device address privacy	None	Private device addressing supported
Encryption algorithm	E0/SAFER+	AES-CCM
Audio capable	Yes	Yes (Bluetooth LE audio is introduced in Bluetooth Core Specification 5.2)
Network topology	Point-to-point (including piconet)	Point-to-point (including piconet) Broadcast Mesh

This table summarizes prominent applications of Bluetooth BR/EDR and Bluetooth LE.

Application	Bluetooth BR/EDR	Bluetooth LE
Audio streaming applications such as: Bluetooth headphones or earbuds Bluetooth speakers Bluetooth watches	Supported	Supported
Location and direction finding applications such as: Asset tracking Indoor navigation services Beacon-based services	Not supported	Supported
Data transmission applications such as: Medical and health equipments Sports and fitness equipments Peripherals and accessories	Not supported	Supported
Device network applications such as: Monitoring systems and services Automation systems Control systems	Not supported	Supported

References

[1] Bluetooth Technology Website. “Bluetooth Technology Website | The Official Website of Bluetooth Technology.” Accessed December 14, 2021. https://www.bluetooth.com/.

[2] Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG). "Bluetooth Core Specification." Version 5.3. https://www.bluetooth.com/.