Setting up a BLE Mesh network
The Bluetooth Classic and BLE protocols define point-to-point device communications. However, the BLE Mesh protocol defines a complete wireless networking, having a many-to-many topology. The following depicts a BLE Mesh network:
In this figure, there are two types of network nodes:
- Node: An ordinary node in the network
- Relay node: A node that is capable of relaying messages to other nodes in the network
BLE Mesh also defines:
- Low-power nodes: Battery-operated nodes that operate with a low-duty cycle
- Friend nodes: 100% duty nodes that keep messages for the low-power nodes they support
- Proxy nodes: These provide a means of communication for mobile devices with no BLE Mesh stack running.
The BLE Mesh network runs on top of the BLE protocol. The architecture of the stack is as follows:
As application...