BLUETOOTH
Bluetooth
Date Published: | |
Last Modified: |
Overview
Bluetooth is a collection of short range wireless communication protocols. The Bluetooth Special Interests Group (SIG) was founded in 1998 and oversees the development of Bluetooth standards1. The original Bluetooth is known as Bluetooth Classic and was designed as a short-range wireless point-to-point communications protocol.
Piconet And Scatternets
A Piconet is the term used for a small Bluetooth network with 1 master device connected to up to 7 active slave devices. Up to 255 more slave devices may be connected to the master but in a inactive or “parked” state. Active slaves can be parked to bring parked devices into the active state2.
Both active and parked slaves in a Piconet are time-synchronized to the master so that RF contention does not occur (they implement a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) network).
A Scatternet is two or more independent Piconets which are connected together by one node in one Piconet (either the master or a slave) also acting as a slave in the second Piconet3.
Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP)
This is a bluetooth standard which supports the streaming of audio between bluetooth-enabled devices.
Bluetooth 4.0
In 2010, the Bluetooth Core Specification version 4.0 was released. This included Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), which is now more commonly known as Bluetooth Smart. Bluetooth Smart specifies a hub-and-spoke connection model (with broadcast support), but no mesh topology.
An attribute is a piece of labelled and addressable data. A characteristic is a group of attributes, and a service is a group of attributes.
attribute < characteristic < service
Bluetooth 4.0 uses the server/client paradigm.
Bluetooth Smart Mesh Working Group
In 2017, a set of three specifications were released by the Bluetooth SIG:
- Mesh Profile
- Mesh Model
- Mesh Device Properties
These specifications allowed Bluetooth devices to form a mesh network. Mesh Profiles use Bluetooth LE for it’s underlying radio communications, and as such Mesh Profiles work with Bluetooth 4.2 and Bluetooth 5 devices.
Bluetooth Mesh data packets can be up to 384 bytes.
Packet Delivery
Packets are not routed in a Bluetooth mesh, but instead use flooding. Packets are not sent through a particular sequence of nodes to reach the destination, nor are routing tables kept by any of the nodes. Instead, nodes can be designated as relays receive the message and re-broadcast it to everyone in range. Any relays receiving this will then re-broadcast it again, and so on. Nodes keep track of the packet ID so that they do not re-transmit a message they have already received and transmitted before. This method of flooding is intended to keep the network simple and resilient to node failure. If nodes acted as routers, their failure might have a significant impact on the network4.
Latencies
Bluetooth mesh latency depends on the payload size, number of nodes (incl. number of relays) and the connection topology. You can expect round-trip latencies of around 50ms for packets with an 8 byte payload that go through 3 hops5. Silicon Labs has a great application note, AN1137: Bluetooth Mesh Network Performance which goes into mesh latencies in more detail.
Encryption
Two types of encryption keys:
- Network keys: Specific to a physical network.
- Application keys: Specific to the function of the data, e.g. reading sensor values vs. configuring the sensor.
Generic Models
Generic OnOff Server
Generic Level Server
References
Wikipedia (2023, Apr 27). Bluetooth Special Interest Group. Retrieved 2023-05-24, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_Special_Interest_Group. ↩︎
Wikipedia (2021, May 16). Piconet. Retrieved 2023-05-24, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piconet. ↩︎
Vijay K. Garg (2007). Wireless Personal Area Network — Bluetooth. Wireless Communications & Networking. Retrieved 2023-05-24, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780123735805/wireless-communications-and-networking. ↩︎
Martin Woolley (2017, Aug 1). BlueTooth Blog - An Intro to Bluetooth Mesh Part 2. BlueTooth SIG. Retrieved 2023-05-24, from https://www.bluetooth.com/blog/an-intro-to-bluetooth-mesh-part2/. ↩︎
Silicon Labs. AN1137: Bluetooth Mesh Network Performance. Retrieved 2023-05-24, from https://www.silabs.com/documents/public/application-notes/an1137-bluetooth-mesh-network-performance.pdf. ↩︎
Authors

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .
Related Content:
- LVDS (Low-Voltage Differential Signalling)
- How To Use SocketCAN With The Command-Line In Linux
- Z-Wave
- How To Calculate Maximum Track Current
- Microstrips
Tags
- communication protocol
- Bluetooth
- mesh
- network
- Bluetooth 4.0
- hops
- flooding
- packets
- messages
- encryption
- latencies
- Silicon Labs
- nodes
- routing
- Bluetooth SIG