Which protocol to use?

[Pavel K]

Hi everyone,

We are trying to choose which protocol use for connecting devices based on Nordic SoCs. We use devices in following way:

1. about 300 - 500 devices (wearable - smart watches)
2. industrial site, walls, concrete, metal etc.
3. site area up to 1 km2
4. each devices send data to gateway - 6 kbytes every 10-20 minutes and 190 kbytes 3 times a day
5. protocol should support identification of sent data (from which device it arrived)

I know it is a lot to ask, but what would you suggest?

Regards Pavel

[Pavel K]

Hello Jan,

Thank you very much for your reply! I do apologise for not properly explaining all the details, let me provide information on your questions:

1. Devices are moving - its a wearable device for people
2. Its more towards fewer routers, if it is bluetooth on site go 1 km2, that will be a lot of nodes, very hard to maintain and install
3. All devices are battery powered, 190 mAh, we do need to be economical

I hope that gives clarity.

Regards Pavel

[endnode]

You cannot cover the area without heaving easy access to (ideally) multiple "boarder" exit points at the time. Yes, it can work as demo or in theory with large network of moving devices and just few exit nodes but our research (~2 years ago) showed that even the best in class (at that moment) commercial mash networks based on 2.4GHz radio cannot achieve any reasonable throughput in anything like real time (like dozens of seconds or minutes between event on the device and information reaching backend/boarder). And that was just ten devices in few rooms. I cannot imagine how that could reliably work with hundreds of devices on area of square kilometer. But maybe BT SIG mash or some other proprietary/open source project can deliver better performance today then what I've seen some time ago. And yes, battery operation definitely don't help, you can end up with battery life in weeks.