Bluetooth Low Energy Developer’s Checklist

This white paper provides a developer’s checklist that can serve as a reference of best practices to follow for creating a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) product that is reliable, power-efficient, and secure, without sacrificing user experience.

Different Bluetooth products have different requirements, and while the items in this developer’s checklist address issues that are common to many systems, some of the content may not apply to every application.

Many BLE devices and stacks / SDKs include support for the features and ideas that are presented here; however, they may not be enabled by default, and they may not be used in every example. Therefore, it is recommended that you reference this checklist during the architecture, development, and verification phases of your design.

The BLE Developer’s Checklist covers topics such as:

• Power, Throughput, and Latency tradeoffs involved when selecting Connection Parameters & Advertising Parameters
• How GATT/ATT operations (e.g. Notifications, Indications, Write Requests, Write Commands) impact throughput and how to optimize your system
• How to properly select spec-compliant GATT Service and Characteristic UUIDs
• Optimal Link Layer (LL) PDU Lengths and ATT_MTU sizes
• Bluetooth Security: Why you should use LE Secure Connections and not LE Legacy Pairing
• How the Bluetooth Privacy Feature works, and why every product should use it
• How the Filter Accept List can be used to prevent unauthorized connections
• Tips for Implementing Over-the-Air Firmware Updates in BLE products
• Keys for stable and reliable performance with iOS and Android devices

If you’re looking for a shortcut to implementing these best practices, consider developing with the SwaraLink Bluetooth Low Energy Platform. SwaraLink is a cross-platform middleware that simplifies and reduces the cost of developing high-quality products that use Bluetooth Low Energy Technology. Our simplified API enables quick and easy development of production-quality embedded and mobile software without needing to become a Bluetooth expert.