Experimental evaluation of 6BLEMesh: IPv6-based BLE mesh networks

Abstract

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) has become a major wireless technology for the Internet of Things (IoT). Recent efforts of academia, industry and standards development organizations have focused on creating BLE mesh network solutions. 6BLEMesh is a specification being developed by the IETF that defines an IPv6-oriented approach for BLE mesh networking. In this paper, we perform an experimental evaluation of 6BLEMesh, based on a real implementation. We evaluate latency, round trip time (RTT) and energy consumption. For the latter, we model the device current consumption, we determine the energy efficiency of communication, and we obtain the theoretical device lifetime (for battery-operated devices), for three different hardware platforms

This work has been funded in part by the spanish Government through projects TEC2016-79988-P, PID2019-106808RA-I00, AEI/FEDER, UE, and by secretaria d’Universitats i Recerca del Departament d’Empresa i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya grant 2017 sGR 376.

Postprint (published version)