When we thought we had all IoT connectivity options needed - Welcome Bluetooth MESH

Out of the 'new challenges' that IoT presents reliable connectivity is surely one of the larger ones. Differing from the Internet where, thanks to $Billions of investments by Internet Providers, LAN and WiFi equipment suppliers and Mobile Operators over the last 20 years, we have reliable connectivity solutions the IoT world is filled with additional connectivity solutions where easy setup, security and reliability has not been fully established. This is particularly true in the low power area where the promise of multi-year battery powered devices end up using connectivity solutions that are far from proven to function over years, months, days or even hours. Add to this IoT use cases where low power networks need to function over larger geographic distances like building control, production monitoring or any other local area applications. For many years ZigBee and associated 802.15.4 standards provided technical solutions although for various reasons, ZigBee never really took off as a connectivity standard.

Enter Bluetooth MESH which was introduced last week by the Bluetooth SIG. This evolution of Bluetooth Low Energy is designed to support networks with 100s and 1000s of nodes with a reliable communication backbone. Initial use cases are the ones Zigbee tried to address like building automation and industrial automation. Other applications are beaconing - i.e. interconnecting networks of beacons. While supporting both Bluetooth 4 and 5 standards, the higher 5 now offers data rates of up to 2MB/s between nodes spaced up to 200 meters apart.

The announcement of Bluetooth MESH was preceded by extensive technical specifications for the MESH technology which overcomes nearly all teh shortcomings of previous Bluettoth implementations.

Finally, the real advantage that Bluetooth brings is that it is a well known connectivity standards supported by a number of semiconductor manufacturers and deployed on billions of devices (Smart Phones) around the world. One of teh Bluetooth Innovators, Nordic Semiconductors is the first to market announcing the nRF5 SDK for MESH today.

These events are good news for IoT and Industrial IoT in that they bring a well known robust connectivity technology that can now be incorporated in designs of new IoT devices. Not only is it a step towards ubiquity of more devices, it will also pave the way for battery powered IoT products.

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