Coded phy mesh alongside 1M PHY GATT?

[Tom]

Hi, am I able to communicate over mesh with long range (coded phy) and simultaneously communicate over GATT (say to Android phone) using 1M phy? If so, could you point me to where in the mesh SDK I might change the phy settings? Thanks

[Bjørn Kvaale]

Hi,

Bluetooth Mesh is not based on the Bluetooth 5 stack, so there is no official support for long range coded phy or 2 mbps. However, there have been multiple questions about this on devzone & this question contains a patch which you can try to achieve coded phy with Bluetooth Mesh. I have double checked the code in the mesh sdk v2.1.1 & it seems like the modifications should work here too. 

[Tom]

Yes thanks I have successfully got the long range mesh working but I was hoping to communicate over BLE/GATT using 1M phy at the same time as doing mesh with coded phy. Are these two situations compatible or do they require different hardware settings of the radio peripheral?

[Bjørn Kvaale]

Theoretically, you can get this working. The only problem is that this is not defined in the Bluetooth mesh spec, which means you would probably not get this qualified by Bluetooth SIG. You can get this to work on Nordic chips, but it is not recommended at this point in time. If you send me a PM on devzone with your country location, I can put you in touch with your local Regional Sales Manager for an update on whether this would be possible or not.

[gio]

Hi Bjorn, 

do you have any update on this probable qualification issue?  

Do you mean that "mesh over Long range" may have issues, or "mesh over Long range together with 1Mbps GATT"?

In our case, we are interested in creating mesh over Long range, but allow any node in the mesh to scan BT4 and/or BT5 advertising messages. Is this feasible with Nordic chipsets? Do you think it could have qualification issues? 

Thanks

[Bjørn Kvaale]

First off, Bluetooth Mesh is based on Bluetooth v4.2, not Bluetooth v5. Therefore, long range is not a standard feature of Bluetooth Mesh.

When it comes to Bluetooth qualification, this seems like a slightly gray area. I believe the Bluetooth SIG will have issues if you want to call it Bluetooth Mesh Long Range or Bluetooth Long Range, as then you are using the Bluetooth name even though Mesh & Long Range are not part of the spec.

If you however create a standard mesh network & in addition, have a proprietary long range feature extension, this should be ok. You will then have to say that it was your invention to mix the Bluetooth Mesh with the Bluetooth Long Range functionality. As long as this part is proprietary, this should work out fine.

Yes, you should be able to scan for both BT4.2 & Bluetooth 5 advertising messages. You would most likely need to use the timeslot API to achieve this.