Bluetooth Mesh Network Revolutionizing the Industrial IoT Industry
VOLANSYS (An ACL Digital Company)
Trusted Technology Partner for Product Engineering and Digital Transformation Services
Bluetooth, a well-known wireless technology has continued expanding its capabilities across the world. The adoption and device production of Bluetooth technology has dramatically increased every year. The advancements in Bluetooth technology have continued its positioning for new environments, including the commercial and industrial use cases. The technology enables low-power and low-cost sensors, precise positioning, wireless connectivity, and power to compute and analyze the collected data (big data analytics).
In Industrial IoT (IIoT) 4.0, efficiency and productivity are important, and Bluetooth? mesh technology is leading this market to provide the required level of standard. According to the research, there will be around 200 million annual shipments of bluetooth? devices to be used in Industrial IoT by 2025.?
BLE Mesh Technology for Industry 4.0
Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has standardized Bluetooth mesh networks, designed from scratch to meet the industry standards where performance, reliability, and security are of utmost importance. This technology is based on the Bluetooth LE specification and is compatible with existing Bluetooth LE devices. However, in comparison with the other low power wireless networking technology, Bluetooth mesh technology is a complete full-stack solution that includes everything starting from the low-level physical radio layer to the high-level application layer.
What makes BLE Mesh Ideal for Industrial Applications?
There are many reasons which make BLE mesh suitable for Industrial applications in place of other wireless technologies. In any industrial area, there are multiple sensory networks which are either capturing some information or working as per the configured parameter which changes as per the need. Handling such a complex network and lots of configurations is a challenge for any wireless technology. BLE mesh network is best suited for such application as it revolutionizes mesh communication in the following ways,
BLE mesh enables the use cases with large-scale device networks, ideally suited for monitoring/controlling a specific area where a mesh network consists of a number of devices which needs to be communicated between each other autonomously with added features of scalability, security, reliability, performance and so on.
Publish-subscribe Model for Communication in BLE Mesh
Bluetooth mesh network technology supports up to 32767 devices in a network with a maximum network depth of 126 hops. The BLE mesh network nodes are configured to work as a publish-subscribe model, where information among nodes is transferred through small data packets. Therefore, the sensor nodes use the data packets to publish information on the network and at the same time, other nodes can subscribe to this data. To spread this message across the network, the originating node broadcasts a message using advertisements and other nodes in the network receive the message and forward it to other nodes, which in turn extends the range of the mesh network beyond the capability of an individual Bluetooth link.
How BLE Mesh Features are Suitable for Industrial Applications
The features provided by BLE mesh technology have opened new paths for several Industrial IoT applications . Such large industrial sensor networks are used at logistics hubs, warehouses, public places, construction sites, etc. Bluetooth? location-based services and smart wearables are also wide use cases in Industrial real-time sensor controlling and monitoring.
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As shown in the below illustration, the BLE mesh network utilizes Bluetooth? short-range radio in sensor modules. These sensor modules could be either a temperature sensor, thermostat, light bulb or camera module. There are limitless possibilities for these smart Bluetooth? modules which can be integrated into an existing network and are used to communicate with gateways. Nowadays almost all smartphones support Bluetooth, therefore this makes it an obvious tool for sensor and network configuration with mobile networks to the internet.
However, the latest generation of smartphones that support Bluetooth technology can be used as mobile gateways between the Internet and Industrial devices. So, many industries can replace it with Bluetooth LE for this use case, to bring down device cost and power consumption.
Large Industrial Use Cases with BLE Mesh Network
There are many use cases which start from smart lighting to smart building covering: Asset tracking, beacon management, occupancy control, predictive maintenance , HVAC systems, emergency lighting, building automation, etc. With an existing mesh network, one can integrate an N number of applications on the same network. Let’s understand the use cases in detail:
“The mobile receives Bluetooth signals from beacons installed on specific objects inside any vicinity. These beacons when coming into contact with any user it sends either location data, directions to desired places, or any other useful information targeted to some application use case via Bluetooth advertisements and push notifications.”
Let’s understand the location service use cases:
Future of Industrial IoT with BLE Mesh
The latest BLE mesh standard SIG released has boosted the operational range, increased speeds, and opened up new doors for mesh networking or many-to-many point use cases. The major advantage is that Bluetooth devices can run for years on a coin-cell battery, and that is because of the radio power optimizations. All these features coupled with the reliable security and scalability of its wireless communication make the BLE mesh network a remarkably ideal solution for industrial organizations. It’s going to revolutionize the Industrial IoT (IIoT) market and kickstart adoption in the wide market. Bluetooth will offer a reliable, scalable and low-cost solution for augmenting smart buildings and factories of the future that will rely on this tech to grow and move forward.
Originally published at https://volansys.com/