Bluetooth Mesh Analysis, Issues, and Challenges

Ángela Hernández‐Solana

doi:10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2980795

2020-01-01

Ángela Hernández‐Solana *

David Pérez Díaz de Cerio

Mario García‐Lozano

Antonio Valdovinos

J.L. Valenzuela

DOI：10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2980795

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摘要

En 中文

BLE is a widely used short-range technology which has gained a relevant position inside the Internet-of-Things (IoT) paradigm development thanks to its simplicity, low-power consumption, low-cost and robustness. New enhancements over BLE have focused on supporting mesh network topology. Compared to other mesh networks, BLE mesh has only considered a managed flooding protocol in its first version. Managed flooding may generally seem inefficient in many contexts, but it is a high desirable option when data transmission is urgent, the network is small or its configuration changes in a very dynamic way. Knowing the interest to many application contexts, this paper analyses the impact of tweaking several features over the reliability and efficiency of the mesh network. These features are configured and controlled in different layers: message repetition schemes, the transmission randomization, the election of a scheme based on an acknowledged or unacknowledged transmission, etc. In order to estimate the real performance of a mesh network deployment, this paper evaluates the effects of the interaction of the chosen parameters, their appropriate adjustment in relation with the characteristics of real implementations and the true overhead related to the whole protocol stack. The paper identifies configuration challenges, proposes network tuning criteria and outlines possible standard improvements. For this purpose, a detailed assessment on the implementation and execution of real devices has been performed with their chipset limitations.

Keyword:

Bluetooth low energy

wireless mesh networks

BLE mesh

managed flooding

performance