## 1 Introduction
The use of power line communication (PLC) can be another way to let the home energy management (HEM) system communicate with home appliances and control them [14]. Several literature works have been published in the last few years. For instance, the smart home control network proposed in [15] employs the PLC as the network backbone and the WN for data sensing. A prototype of the proposed smart home control network with smart lighting control is implemented, while simulations and practical experiments show that the implemented prototype system works well and that the proposed smart home control network provides a good packet failure rate and considerable energy savings. Another home energy management system is introduced in [16] and considers also the energy generation. In this case, PLC modems are installed in each solar panel to monitor its status. Therefore, the main aim of PLC technology is the monitoring of each solar panel for maintenance. On the contrary, an accurate analysis of a PLC application in a smart home is presented in [17]. The authors present a new method in order to estimate the impedance of the home power line, in the Federal Communications Commission band, and then to solve some problems in this area. However, some issues need to be analyzed. The two key issues associated with PLC are firstly one relating to the cabling configuration and the second to interference. In order for the power line to work, the connecting devices need to be physically located on the same circuit. However, this is not always the case, as many houses have separate circuits for the three different phases of electric power that comes to the home to reduce the load on each wire. For instance, such a design is particularly common in new buildings where the need for increased power necessitates the use of multiple circuits. In these circumstances, power line technology will not work throughout the whole home. It is known that wireless networks do not have major problems in device positioning, precisely thanks to their \"wireless\" nature. Regarding radio interference and fading problems, it is necessary to note that these issues can be found also in PLC, due to the leakage of RF signals. As the number of power line devices in the same area increases and power line technology is being used by multiple households, the signals are being shared among multiple users, and the risk of interference and degradation occurs, leading to a reduction in the throughput of data, as the signals are all sharing the same frequency. Other electrical equipment also injects noise into the electrical wires, resulting in degradation in the performance of nearby PLC networks. Wireless networks are useful for gathering environmental data, and they can be also a valid solution for controlling home appliances. A wireless network is not constrained by the existence nor quality of the existing cabling infrastructure. It offers good speeds, greater predictability and quality and the option of moving devices at will. To cope with HEM, in this paper, a novel solution is introduced. In fact, it is clear that an HEM implementation can lead to a socially- and economically-beneficial environment by addressing consumers' and utilities' concerns. For instance, increased savings, better peak load management and the reduction in peak-to-average ratio are some of the benefits that can be achieved by the solution proposed in this paper. This proposed solution is based on the communication among home appliances, a central energy management unit (EMU), a smart meter and a storage unit inside a smart home. Furthermore, the communication among these entities is based on a WN using the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol [8]. In fact, the choice of a wireless protocol with respect to another one may involve significant benefits and quite different results. The novelty introduced in this paper is both the use of an HEM scheme and mainly the use of BLE in the wireless network, which coordinates the communication between home appliances.