EVALUATION OF THE BLUETOOTH MESH MANAGED FLOODING ALGORITHM USING SIMULATION

ABSTRACT Bluetooth Special Interest Group released a new version of Bluetooth at the end of 2016 which is called Bluetooth 5. The version had superior features such as increased range which is 4 times the range of Bluetooth 4.2 and improved speed. It was expected to revolutionaries the use of IoTs. However, it used a star topology which limited its range within which it could operate. Both routing and flooding solutions from both Bluetooth SIG and academia have been suggested which led to the development of Bluetooth Mesh. Bluetooth Mesh uses a flooding algorithm which uses a large number of nodes just to send a single message which indicates that more energy is used. This project develops a simulator for both routing and flooding algorithms and evaluates their ability to facilitate Bluetooth Mesh functionalities and energy efficiency in terms of relays done to deliver a single message. From this simulation, although managed flooding uses a lot of energy to transmit, it is the most efficient because it takes care of the individual power needs of the nodes in the network.