how does the ble mesh work

[wim]

hi

I am trying to gather information on what is needed to create a mesh network using BLE. I am more familiar with Zigbee/Thread, but I am asked to implement something using the nrf51822. I was thinking of 2 options :

• use 6lowPan : I guess routing functions and such needs to be done on the higher layer, so is not implemented in the IoT SDK?
• I see this link mentioned in several posts: github.com/.../nRF51-ble-bcast-mesh how does this work? which soft device does it use? Can it be done with the S110 SD? how is data transferred from 1 node to another? how do nodes keep track of their neigborhood? I have only implemented slave devices on S110 up till now, so I am curious how 2 slave devices can communicate with 1 another? is the advertising beacon used to transport data?

Any help to understand the different options better is very welcome.

[David Edwin]

You can take a look at the documentation available in the github repo. These are the relevant links that answer your question on softdevice support, method used to transfer the packets from node to node. https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/nRF51-ble-bcast-mesh/blob/master/README.adoc

https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/nRF51-ble-bcast-mesh/blob/master/docs/how_it_works.adoc

am curious how 2 slave devices can communicate with 1 another? is the advertising beacon used to transport data? Yes, the advertiser and scanner are implemented in the Timeslot API and is used to transport data.