BLE Mesh Range

[Urvisha Andani]

I am Currently under process of evaluating various modules for implementing BLE Mesh, Had few concerns regarding the same, would be great if someone can clarify upon them.

1) In Nrf Modules weather BLE Mesh in Implemented upon BLE4 or BLE5

2) Max Transmit power that can used in MESH Mode

3) In Mesh Mode are Le Phy coded configuration are available. particularly looking at 125 bp/s.

Ran into  range issues with BLE solution from another vendor that i was testing (Normal mode was great,but MESH mode had limitations), so thought of clarifying this questions before starting tests with NRf solutions.

Any redirection towards an In-Depth article would be of great help too.

[Marjeris Romero]

Hi,

1) BLE mesh is based on BLE 4.0. It is compatible with BLE 4.0 and higher (this includes BLE 5.0) but does not implement any features of BLE 5.0. You won't be able to use 2Mbit and Coded PHY with Mesh, as these are BLE 5.0 features. The Bluetooth mesh speficication is defined by the Bluetooth SIG group and can be downloaded here.

2) The max transmit power will depend on which SoC you choose. The max transmit power for the nRF52840 is +8dBm. For the nRF52832 is +4dBm.

3) As I said, coded PHY is a BLE 5.0 feature and is not implemented in the BLE mesh specification.

And if you want more information about our BLE mesh solution have a look a these pages for more information:

Basic Bluetooth Mesh concepts

nRF5 SDK for Mesh architecture

Best Regards,

Marjeris

[awneil]

Urvisha Andani said:

In Mesh Mode are Le Phy coded configuration are available

As Marjeris Romero said, The Bluetooth SIG specifies BLE Mesh to use BLE 4.0 - so you can't use BLE 5 features if you want to be compliant with the standard.

Of course, if standards compliance is not important to you, there's nothing to stop you developing your own proprietary variant ...

But you would not be allowed to call it, "BLE Mesh"

[Urvisha Andani]

Thanks for the insite, looks like proprietary variant is the way ahead :)

[awneil]

If your question is resolved, please verify the answer(s):

[Marjeris Romero]

Hi,

Just to add some more information about how to make your own propietary solution. There is a ticket here about how to change the PHY in mesh that may be useful for you. It's old but you can still take a look at it and I recommend you make a new ticket if problems arises.

Just remember a propietary solution will not be complient with "BLE mesh", as explained above.

-Marjeris