An Energy Balanced Flooding Algorithm for a BLE Mesh Network

This paper presents a proposal for a balanced flooding protocol for mesh networks over BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy). The primary goal is to save battery lifetime by converting nodes into a mesh network in a balanced mode and thus increasing the lifetime of the network. Based on an extension of the flooding protocol Trickle, the proposed protocol, Drypp, aims to balance the loads of the network nodes. Hence it seeks to make nodes with a higher load more active in the network in comparison to nodes with a lower load. A performance analysis will be executed, comparing the proposed protocol and Trickle. The metrics of node lifetime, network lifetime, throughput and node battery loads will be analyzed.