Prototype implementation of multi-hop communication scheme among smartphones based on BLE communication

This paper develops a prototype chat application that employs an automated communication scheme among smart-phones based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology. Conventional smartphone applications use a cellular network to communicate with each other even when they can communicate directly. The proposed scheme realizes a direct data transfer over long distances by designing multi-hop communication technology. As communication technology, we employ BLE that is the latest standard of Bluetooth with low-rate communication capability and low-power consumption. We demonstrate the prototype chat application based on the proposed method to confirm the feasibility of the proposed multi-hop communication.