Application-Layer Time Synchronization and Data Alignment Method for Multichannel Biosignal Sensors Using BLE Protocol

Abstract

Wearable wireless biomedical sensors have emerged as a rapidly growing research field. For many biomedical signals, multiple sensors distributed about the body without local wired connections are required. However, designing multisite systems at low cost with low latency and high precision time synchronization of acquired data is an unsolved problem. Current solutions use custom wireless protocols or extra hardware for synchronization, forming custom systems with high power consumption that prohibit migration between commercial microcontrollers. We aimed to develop a better solution. We successfully developed a low-latency, Bluetooth low energy (BLE)-based data alignment method, implemented in the BLE application layer, making it transferable between manufacturer devices. The time synchronization method was tested on two commercial BLE platforms by inputting common sinusoidal input signals (over a range of frequencies) to evaluate time alignment performance between two independent peripheral nodes. Our best time synchronization and data alignment method achieved absolute time differences of 69 ± 71 μs for a Texas Instruments (TI) platform and 477 ± 490 μs for a Nordic platform. Their 95th percentile absolute errors were more comparable—under 1.8 ms for each. Our method is transferable between commercial microcontrollers and is sufficient for many biomedical applications.

Keywords

• Bluetooth low energy (BLE)
• biosensor
• time synchronization
• wireless sensor network
• Internet of things (IoT)