RESEMBLE: A Real-Time Stack for Synchronized Mesh Mobile Bluetooth Low Energy Networks

Abstract

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a wireless technology for low-power, low-cost and lowcomplexity short-range communications. On top of the BLE stack, the Bluetooth Mesh profile can be adopted to handle large networks with mesh topologies. BLE is a promising candidate for the implemention of Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs), thanks to its wide diffusion (e.g., on smartphones and tablets) and the lower cost of the devices compared to other wireless industrial communication technologies. However, neither the BLE nor the Bluetooth Mesh specifications can provide real-time messages with bounded delays. To overcome this limitation, this work proposes RESEMBLE, a real-time stack developed on top of BLE that is able to realize low-cost IWSNs over mesh topologies. RESEMBLE offers support to both real-time and non-real-time communications on the same network. Moreover, RESEMBLE provides clock synchronization, thus allowing for Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) transmissions. The clock synchronization provided by RESEMBLE can be also exploited by the upper layers’ industrial applications to implement timecoordinated actions.