Reevaluating Bluetooth Low Energy for Ingestible Electronics

Abstract

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) has been widely adopted in wearable devices; however, it has not been widely used in ingestible electronics, primarily due to concerns regarding severe tissue attenuation at the 2.4 GHz band. In this work, we systematically reevaluate the feasibility of BLE for ingestible applications by benchmarking its performance against representative sub-GHz communication schemes across power consumption, throughput, tissue-induced attenuation, latency, and system-level integration constraints. We demonstrate that incorporating an RF amplifier enables BLE to maintain robust communication links through tissue-mimicking media while preserving favorable energy efficiency. We further quantify the relationship between throughput and energy consumption over a wide operating range and demonstrate that, for the majority of ingestible sensing applications with throughput requirements below 100 kbps, BLE achieves substantially lower power consumption than sub-GHz alternatives. End-to-end latency measurements show that BLE offers significantly lower latency than sub-GHz solutions due to its native compatibility with modern computing infrastructure. Finally, we analyze antenna form factor and ecosystem integration, highlighting the mechanical and translational advantages of BLE in ingestible system design. Collectively, these results demonstrate that BLE, when appropriately configured, represents a compelling and scalable wireless communication solution for next-generation ingestible electronics.