Can Mesh scanning on two different PHY (1Mbps and 125kbps) simultaneously?

[frank_c]

Hi all,

I am try to test light switch server example in mesh SDK (v3.2.0) with nRF5 SDKs(v15.3.0).
Using Coded PHY(125kbps) as this post or standard PHY (1Mbps) seperately can both work well in light switch server.

In scanner.c, scanner_config_reset() can use scanner_config_radio_mode_set() to set radio mod.
It can only support one mode and it can't set multiple modes such as (RADIO_MODE_NRF_62K5BIT | ADIO_MODE_BLE_1MBIT)

Can the scanner to scan two PHY(1Mbps and 125kbps) at the same time?

How to do it ?

Thanks !

[tesc]

Hi,

No, the scanner cannot scan two PHY at the same time.

It might be possible to make an implementation that uses mesh operation on 1Mbit and combines that with using the SoftDevice for scanning on a separate PHY. Then at any one time the radio will operate in one of two modes: Either it will scan on the different PHY, or it will operate the Bluetooth mesh. When operating the Bluetooth mesh you can forward received advertisements to the application. That way it might be possible scan for advertisements on different PHYs when using Bluetooth mesh. Note that with such a solution you will not run the mesh on two separate PHYs, as you will only be able to scan for regular advertisements on the second PHY.

Running mesh concurrently on two PHYs is not a good idea. It would require significant rewrites of the mesh stack, it would lead to degraded performance of the mesh network, and it would no longer comply with the Bluetooth mesh specification. Bluetooth mesh is specified to only use 1Mbit.

We have not done any experiments combining PHYs in the context of Bluetooth mesh. The complexity of such a solution is outside the scope of what we would provide any examples for, so if you attempt to make such a solution I am afraid you will be mostly on your own.

Regards,
Terje