Bluetooth Mesh - The Launch

There has been no event anticipated more than the public launch of Bluetooth Mesh. It all started back in 2013 when Google rolled our Android 4.3 with API level 18, introducing support for Bluetooth LE. AT that time I knew (almost) nothing about Bluetooth, but I knew IPv6 over 802.15.4 was a pipe dream. IPv6, even with the 6Lo compression has simply been too heavy too fly and 802.15.4 has been too slow to give it a lift. Yes, back in 2012-2013, at Silvair we tried something very similar to what Thread is today, and unfortunately we found this combination incapable of addressing the needs of wireless lighting.

Hence looking for a new radio.

Google's announcement of support for Bluetooth LE in Android sparked hopes. BLE was already supported by iOS, so with Android on board it seemed like a good candidate to try.

It did not fly either. We quickly found out the single-hop range was really limited and the hub-and-spoke topology offered was far from anything usable for our needs: only a handful of point-to-point connections. Great for linking a heart rate monitor to a phone, but not to control a ceiling of 500 lights in a hotel lobby.

But there was hope.

The underlying physics of Bluetooth LE has been very promising. Within a couple of months we built a BLE module capable of communicating over a 500m single hop distance. This was extremely encouraging. We also found that with proper software engineering, running the code almost directly on a RF silicon, we were able to run multiple Bluetooth roles at the same time - namely being a GAP Observer and a GAP Broadcaster at the same time. This experiment was done in early 2014 and you can see it now being the fundamental requirement of the Mesh Profile specification: see the last paragraph in Section 3.3.1.

I'd say this was the conception of Bluetooth Mesh.

After all, if we could take an off-the-shelf Bluetooth SoC and modify the software in a way that allowed receiving and retransmitting messages, building a mesh network on Bluetooth was possible. It was "just" a matter of nailing down the details of this software and documenting it as an open specification, so others could do the same.

This "just" step took us more than 3 years and we've ended up with three specifications, around 1000 pages combined. Yes it is complex. But along the way we found out there was no way of delivering something good within a few months and a dozen of pages. The nature of wireless mesh networks is complex. And we are very happy with the end result. Jets engines are complex too. Cars are complex. So are cellular networks and many other technology wonders we're using every day. They are all successful because they are complex and solve the complex nature of problems.

Building the Mesh was an endurance marathon. All under covers of confidentiality, under fire of other competing standards that were claiming a lot and have not delivered much. We knew we'd be successful. It was just so difficult to remain silent and keep going to the finish line. The launch and the initial reception have been so rewarding... I have not heard a single negative opinion. Time will tell, but we believe the V1.0 of Bluetooth Mesh is much more than anybody has anticipated. It is a complete system for low power interoperable mesh networking. Has all ingredients including extremely deep and flexible application layer (the Mesh Model and Mesh Device Properties specifications).

I have reasons to believe this will be the most successful low power IOT standard.