Bluetooth Low Energy Mesh Networks: A Standards Perspective

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) mesh networking is an emerging technology domain that promises an important role in the Internet of Things. Significant market opportunities for BLE mesh networking have motivated the recent development of two different BLE mesh networking standards, Bluetooth Mesh and 6BLEMesh, produced by the Bluetooth SIG and IETF, respectively. These two standards follow different technical approaches. In this article, we present the main features of Bluetooth Mesh and 6BLEMesh, and investigate their performance characteristics and trade-offs.