Introduction to Bluetooth Mesh
Bluetooth Special Interests Group announced this year that their Low Energy technology will now support mesh networking. The new mesh capability enables many-to-many device communication and is optimized for creating large scale networks, which is ideally suited to building automation where you have tens, hundreds, or even thousands of devices that need to be securely and reliably connected to one another.
Mesh networking, as opposed to point-to-point networking, has great benefits for reliability allowing for a self-healing, low powered system. There is no central hub to drive the whole system offline, which across as many devices on an office floor, let alone the entire building, can become critical in reducing down-time expenses.
Bluetooth will offer:
• Reliability – with an inherently self-healing network with no single point of failure.
• Scalability – with support for thousands of nodes with industrial-level performance
• Security – Providing industrial-grade security across the network
ABI Research expects 48 billion internet-enabled devices to be installed by 2021, of which nearly one-third will include Bluetooth. It’s no wonder Bluetooth is expected to make a large impact in the world of commercial lighting and controls, with the potential to become a common technology in an industry that has been asking for common standards.