What is difference between 'managed flooding' and 'relaying'?

[kmsmile2]

Hello, team.

Thank you for helping.

I was wondering that what is the difference between 'managed flooding' and 'relaying' in mesh.

The only one that I know is provisioning.

If node do relaying, they(nodes) must be provisioned.

On the other hand, managed flooding don't need provisioning. Am I right?

Actually, I want to flood beacon data by using managed flooding in mesh network. (with no provisioning)

Is it possible?

Thank you so much.

Sincerely,

Minsu Kim

[tesc]

Hi,

"Managed flooding" is the mechanism used for ensuring that packets get transported through the Bluetooth mesh network. "Relaying" is part of that mechanism. In a Bluetooth mesh network, relay nodes listen for packets, and when it gets a packet that it has not seen before it will relay that packet. Each packet also has a time to live (TTL) which puts a limit on how many times the packet will be relayed. These mechanisms together are what we mean by "managed flooding".

In order to participate in the network, and in order to relay messages, the relay nodes need to be provisioned into the network. In other words, the managed flooding used by Bluetooth mesh nodes requires all the participating nodes to be provisioned into the same Bluetooth mesh network.

Regarding the beacons, those can be standard BLE beacons. You then need some nodes in the Bluetooth mesh network that listens for those beacons, and relay the information through the Bluetooth mesh network. For examples of beacon integration, have a look at the EnOcean switch translator client example (which listens for BLE advertisements and sending the information they contain over the Bluetooth mesh network) and the Beaconing example (which shows how to listen for BLE advertisements (beacons) in general). The beaconing example also shows how to be a beacon and mesh node at the same time, but usually it is better to let the beacons be normal BLE beacons (not part of the mesh network) as participating in the mesh network increases power consumption.

Regards,
Terje