Performance Improvement on Reception Confirmation Messages in Bluetooth Mesh Networks

Abstract

Bluetooth mesh is a recent technology built on the Bluetooth low energy protocol stack architecture, focusing on the Internet of Things. It represents an excellent solution for commercial and industrial lighting applications, though it is still evolving. One of the biggest challenges of the Bluetooth mesh network is the improvement of confirmation messages reception. In a Bluetooth mesh network, determining the Status of the received messages is a critical aspect that can generate unexpected issues when multiple devices respond simultaneously, as it may occur in some lighting applications. This behavior can reduce the probability of message delivery due to collisions, especially when the number of devices in the network increases. This article aims to improve the reliability in receiving confirmation messages in a Bluetooth mesh network by proposing a new technique of spreading Status overtime. To evaluate the proposed technique's performance, we compare our technique with a Bluetooth mesh network with standard configuration (SC) using real nodes experimental setup. We evaluated our results in terms of packet-loss rate, obtaining 98.84% of the Status received for the network with our optimized configuration and 96.98% for those with the SC. Finally, an in-depth performance evaluation method for the analysis of the lost Status was also conducted.

Bluetooth Low Energy Mesh: Applications, Considerations and Current State-of-the-Art

“…Although the effect of this behaviour in the experiment with 10 nodes was negligible, it will be interesting to investigate the impact at a larger scale. The case of missing acknowledgments corroborates another experimental study by Pierleoni et al [ 38 ]. In fact, the root cause of this behaviour lies in the BLE simultaneous advertising when multiple nodes send data to the same receiver at the same time [ 59 ].…”

“…BT Mesh standard supports dynamic assignment of the group and virtual addresses so that the physical network structure can be dynamically updated [ 7 ]. However, this method of dynamic group allocation using the publish–subscribe model also presents bottlenecks when a large number of nodes need to send acknowledgements of messages received to a single group owner [ 38 ]. For example, consider an IoT application for an underground mine where a controller node needs to send a mission-critical message (such as a notification to vacate an area due to a flammable gas leak) to hundreds of nodes.…”

“…However, because all of the hundreds of nodes in the group would be attempting to send their acknowledgements to the group owner at the same time, the network must manage high traffic, and there is a high probability of packet losses. A solution was experimentally implemented by Pierleoni et al [ 38 ], where the acknowledgements are sent with a random delay to avoid simultaneous transmission, as suggested in the BT Mesh spec [ 39 ].…”

Recent Advances in Internet of Things Solutions for Early Warning Systems: A Review

“…Cellular networks are widely deployed and they offer reliable services and Quality of Service, but cellular networks can be badly affected by environmental disasters [ 27 , 28 ], which is a critical requirement for the development of EW Systems. Among short range technologies, wireless protocols such as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and Zigbee can offer low-cost solutions with very low power consumption and mesh architectures support [ 29 ]. Their main limit is the lack of support for long distance communication, unless the solution makes use of repeaters, which could enhance the costs [ 30 ].…”

A Rapid Flooding Approach Based on Adaptive Delay and Low-Power Sleep for BLE Mesh Networks

“…Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) [3] is of low power and high compatibility [4], thus has been widely used in IoT especially to interconnect sensors [5]. However, BLE is a short-range wireless technology mainly used in oneto-one and one-to-many communications, which limits the development towards wider area and more device application [6], [7]. As a promising protocol [8] proposed by Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) in 2017, BLE Mesh is enhanced to achieve greater coverage and higher flexibility.…”