Bluetooth Protocol for Opportunistic Sensor Data Collection on IoT Telemetry Applications

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I do think anything of the paper is average.

first of all, the idea is fine, it is worth trying.

some issues:

1. the abstract, from the current abstract, we can not see the concrete action and solid conclusion, they are blur.
2. in line 348, you say 50 ms, where is this from, experiment result, common sense or theoretical, evidence need.
3. title of 4.2.2, lost beacons, it is not right, the whole experiments are about lost beacons, this part is about transmission power, right?
4. all the conclusions are expectative, no surprise, why we still need this paper? 
5. any improved suggestions about the high lost percentage?
6. line 480, same value, I seriously doubt this, how can a bridge received the same data as the beacon just sending once? and the same value is shown in almost all the result figures.

overall, I believe the whole presentation should be revised seriously. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

there are some not very accurate expressions, not grammarly, but in terms of meaning, sorry I forgot where.  

Author Response

Please find attached our detailed responses to the comments. In order to ease the labor of the reviewers, in the new manuscript we have colored in red the differences with the previous version of the article.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. The authors need to provide a detailed, comprehensive review of existing academic work on custom or modified beacon protocols in the background section. This will help assess the originality of their proposed solution.
2. The results section can be moved beyond simply stating percentages of beacons received or lost. They need to analyze the results more deeply, especially in scenarios like "home with obstacles." An explanation of the physics behind signal reflections, such as multipath fading or material absorption, would strengthen their work.
3. The authors need to mention a better connection between the concepts of Opportunistic Edge Computing (OEC) and Blockchain and the main experimental findings. The discussion of results need to relate back to how these technologies may be impacted.
4. The authors need to include interpretations for each scenario. That can specify the types of machinery or metal objects present and discuss how these might contribute to electromagnetic interference and the observed packet loss rates.
5. The authors should elaborate on how signal reflections affect reception at long distances, exploring the possibility of destructive interference caused by multipath signals.
6. The authors need to show the other research efforts that modified or customized beacon frames to carry more data. Comparing these methods and their outcomes with the proposed protocol will highlight the authors’ unique contribution.

Author Response

Please find attached our detailed responses to the comments. In order to ease the labor of the reviewers, in the new manuscript we have colored in red the differences with the previous version of the article.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors are proposing an interesting topic; however, the content of the paper is more on testing the abilities of Bluetooth version 5 than on describing the implementation of the proposed BLE beacon frame.

As the title of the paper is mentioning, the topic should be on the “Protocol” description and implementation of the “Opportunistic Sensor Data Collection”. “Opportunistic sensor data collection” is also mentioned as a keyword, however, there is no mentioning in the paper how does a bridge layer handle the data and makes it available to a client. The issue of IoT interoperability is not addressed throughout the paper.

The experimental design from section 4.1 can be summarized in Table 1 (Background section), where the abilities of different communication protocols vs distance are presented. The results are according to the protocol abilities; it does not prove that the authors have improved or brought something new in extending the BLE range (which is not the focus of the paper).

The authors should focus on describing how does the communication is achieved between the devices. How does the Bridge Layer or Fog Layer know on how many bits is a parameter data represented. There can be multiple sensors with different resolutions for the same physical measurement (e.g. temperature, humidity etc.). The client needs to know for each published sensor what are the sensor proprieties (e.g., tolerance, resolution, measuring interval (min and maximum value) etc.). The authors should detail how interoperability is achieved through the proposed frame.

Because the proposed frame is relaying on Eddystone-TLM, the authors should present the original frame (with details of the fields) and then compare the original frame with the proposed one. The author should indicate where they propose changes to be made. In the current implementation it is not clear if the proposed frame is still compatible with the Eddystone-TLM frame? What will happen in scenario where a device that expects an Eddystone-TLM but is receiving the proposed frame, will the communication be affected? What happens if the Bridge Layer receives an Eddystone-TLM frame that does not follow the authors’ proposed frame?

As mentioned in the previous paragraphs, the authors should focus on detailing how does the IoT layer and Bridge Layer start to communicate so that details about the sent data are provided, beacon time intervals, power settings etc. The focus of the paper should be on the frame and the protocol implementation and not on proving that the BLE can operate in office environments or open space by setting transmitter power levels or increasing timing intervals.

Author Response

Please find attached our detailed responses to the comments. In order to ease the labor of the reviewers, in the new manuscript we have colored in red the differences with the previous version of the article.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The second version has clearly addressed many of the reviewers' suggestions, resulting in substantial modifications. While I appreciate these improvements, I still have concerns regarding the application of mathematical tools and the rationality in the experiments conducted.

Despite these areas for improvement, the current version is acceptable. 

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have addressed all previous questions. The revised manuscript provides more details about the proposed solution making it more interesting for other researchers or even industry applications. The authors have improved the paper by providing details of the proposed protocol implementation and statistics of package reception.