Bluetooth for IoT Connectivity: Eliminating Pairing with Blecon

At Blecon, we're tackling one of the most critical challenges in the Internet of Things (IoT) landscape: connectivity. While traditional Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) solutions have served the industry well, persistent issues with pairing complexity, security vulnerabilities, and limited mobility have driven us to reimagine Bluetooth LE IoT Connectivity from the ground up. Our approach eliminates the need for traditional pairing, adopting a network architecture inspired by cellular systems.

What’s wrong with pairing?

Traditionally, the Bluetooth LE security model relies on pairing. When two devices pair, they generate temporary security keys, allowing them to exchange data securely. 

In this model, Bluetooth operates similarly to connecting two devices with a cable. It’s a concrete relationship between a device, such as a sensor, and what we’ll call an access point. The access point can be an app on a laptop or mobile device or a hardware Bluetooth gateway.

While this model works well for some applications, it is less suitable for others, especially IoT applications. Here are a few reasons why pairing might be problematic for your use-case:

First, it’s a relationship between a specific device (your product) and a specific access point. This is an obvious point, but it’s a fundamental barrier to many applications. It means your device can only communicate once it’s within range of the access point it’s paired with, even if another access point is available.

1:1 relationship of traditional Bluetooth pairing

Second, although pairing provides security between a device and an access point, it does nothing for the security of the communications to the cloud. You’ll have to add that separately, which adds more time and expense.

Third, it pushes a lot of configuration to the edge. With pairing, you must carefully configure and pair all your access points to specific devices. If you want to replace a device on an access point, you’ll have to repeat this configuration, which typically can only be done with physical access to the product. This results in a brittle architecture with single points of failure and, in addition, limits the user experience you can offer to your customers.

Finally, the big one—if you want to leverage Bluetooth's full potential and use mobile phones, laptops, and other existing devices as access points, you’ll have to write apps that run on these devices and use the operating system-level Bluetooth APIs to manage connectivity for your products. You’ll also have to ensure that this software is continuously maintained and tested across a wide range of platforms for the life of your product.

Ok, so what’s the alternative?

At Blecon, we deliver a connectivity model that has all benefits of Bluetooth with the deployment model of Wi-Fi and the network model of cellular. 

In a cellular network, any device can connect to any access point. Devices can roam freely to whichever access point is closest or has the best connectivity, and no configuration of the access point is required to add a new device.

We’ve built the same connectivity model for Bluetooth. With Blecon, your device can seamlessly roam to any Blecon Hotspot, whether that’s a physical hub, apps on a smartphone, or apps running on a PC. You can have several hotspots within range of your device, and the Blecon network will select the best one.

If the device is moving, it will be able to connect as soon as it’s within range of a hotspot. The hotspot can move, too, and devices will gain connectivity whenever it comes within range of them.

Adding a new Blecon Hotspot is as simple as installing an app or plugging in a Blecon Hub. All our hotspots are zero configuration. Your devices will be able to use the new hotspot immediately.

How does it work?

When designing our solution for Bluetooth connectivity for IoT, we had the following critical goals in mind:

Firstly, no pairing or configuration should be required at all on a hotspot.  

Second, hotspots can operate on the broadest possible range of devices. That includes everything from $100 Android phones to point-of-sale terminals, Windows PCs, modern smartphones, and dedicated physical hubs.

Third, we wanted to ensure that device communication is secure to the cloud and that hotspots can never read or modify device data.

Our pairing-free architecture

Blecon has developed what you might describe as a “VPN” for Bluetooth devices. Instead of the security relationship between the device and its access point, it’s between the device and the Blecon network service.

Blecon chip to cloud security

Blecon devices automatically create their cryptographical keys, which help establish a secure end-to-end connection to the Blecon network service regardless of which hotspot is in use. 

Instead of using Bluetooth's default device-to-hotspot security, Blecon devices use a communication protocol designed for Bluetooth IoT Connectivity. In addition, instead of pairing devices to particular access points, you add devices to a Blecon Network, which is a grouping of devices managed by our global network service. 

What does this enable?

Our pairing-free technology has several key benefits. Let’s examine a few of them.

One of the most important ones is your ability to deliver an improved user experience for your customers. You now have the ability to ship your devices anywhere where there is Blecon hotspot connectivity, and you know your devices will be able to connect with zero configuration required by your end users.

You’ll also see improved flexibility and robustness of your Bluetooth connectivity solution. New hotspots will become seamlessly available to devices whenever they are added, and you can have multiple hotspots serving an area. You can even have mobile hotspots providing opportunistic connectivity to devices. 

Use any access point without pairing

Blecon’s simple yet secure protocol underpins all this and provides chip-to-cloud defence against eavesdropping, tampering, replaying, and spoofing. 

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, our pairing-free architecture will allow you to deliver value to your customers faster. With Blecon, you’ll enjoy vastly reduced development time and much-simplified installation and maintenance of your devices. 

If you’d like to learn more about how to deploy Blecon, book a call with us today.

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