Fast custom mesh over ble gatt

[Svetozar-Tolkys]

Have a nice day!
We are working on a project where goal is to build up mesh-network up to 50 nodes with high sum data rate to up 100kbps through the node.
For this purposes conventional ble-mesh or even 6lowpan over thread aren't suitable. And there an idea appeared to build custom mesh-network by means ble gatt profile.
It's known that nrf52840 able to concurrently serve several connections, act peripheral and central role and support multiple connections to peripheral and central.
However these features are definitely available separately one from another and there is a question is it possible to unite them and use concurrently at nrf52840?
The next challenging question is how dramatically the effective throughput of ble link would decrease with increase number of concurrent connections?
In our case 4 concurrent connections to a node is enough.

For me it still isn't clear, how would be multiple concurrent access mechanism work, that's why we have a problem with estimation of effective throughput in case of multiple connections.
We would be very grateful if you could help to find out answers for this questions. Maybe there are others way to solve this problem.
Thanks in advance!

[Mttrinh]

Hi,

Yes, it is possible for the nrf52840 device to have several conncetions concurrently. I suggest you have a look at this example. Also, have a look at this and this example.

Unfortunatly, we haven't tested how the throughtput are affected by the increasing number of connections. I would suggest you start with the example mentioned above and see if the throughput is enough.

 

[Marius Heil]

Hi, have a look at my project https://github.com/mwaylabs/fruitymesh which is basically a mesh over gatt connections. We did not yet optimize it for throughput, but we have some open tasks where we are trying to improve that. It should serve you as a good starting point.