BLEmesh: A Wireless Mesh Network Protocol for Bluetooth Low Energy Devices

Abstract

Bluetooth Low Energy is a highly adopted and anticipated communication solution for the Internet of Things. However, the restriction of data communication topology to point-to-point, limited range of communications, and the lack of IP support make Bluetooth Low Energy less attractive for Internet of Things applications. In Dec. 2014, the Bluetooth SIG standardized the Internet Protocol Support Profile to support the exchanging of IPv6 packets between devices over Bluetooth Low Energy. Still, a mesh networking protocol for multi-hop support is needed for it to overcome the limitations due to short range and restricted topology. This paper introduces Blemish, a wireless mesh network protocol which utilizes the broadcasting capability of wireless transmissions. We identify the available data payload using Bluetooth Low Energy Generic Access Profile -- Non-connectable Advertisement Data for different number of nodes and packets to send in a batch. Then we compare BLEmesh with conventional routing method and flood routing method. Our preliminary evaluation results show that the number of transmissions by BLEmesh is significantly smaller compared to its competitors for some selected network configurations, reducing the aggregated energy consumption within the mesh network.