Silicon Labs (also known as "core technology"), as an important member of the Bluetooth SIG, is making every effort to promote the application of the next-generation Bluetooth mesh network (Mesh) protocol. We will further introduce to industry professionals how to implement popular real-time location services (RTLS) through Bluetooth Mesh profiles by forwarding this article published in the blog by the Bluetooth SIG.
Advantages of Bluetooth applications for real-time location services
The low-power Bluetooth Low Energy device is lightweight and can be used for real-time location services (RTLS) for assets and people. One of its main advantages is the long battery life, which ensures that the portable device is always on. The new Bluetooth Mesh protocol profile provides a basic infrastructure protocol that enables the use of tags in the network of Mesh relay nodes (usually line-powered devices) for message relay.
The position of these nodes is calculated by geometric trilateration techniques, typically determined by the received signal strength (RSSI) of three or more nodes, and the positioning accuracy depends on the individual chips used for RSSI measurements. Commercial products such as the WiSilica patient tracking system typically require a fineness of up to 1 meter. 
Support lighting control
Bluetooth Mesh profiles and Bluetooth Mesh model specifications are primarily used to support lighting control. In the near future, many low-power Bluetooth-based connected lighting products are likely to be widely used, especially in the enterprise market. Because the use of such lighting devices as interconnect nodes in the enterprise is not only convenient, but also cost-effective, thereby realizing the location awareness of low-power IoT devices in the entire enterprise environment.
The Bluetooth Mesh model specification has defined the flow of setting and reporting by a single fixture location, for example, it can be used to define the location of a trilateration reference node. Secondly, the Bluetooth Mesh configuration file also supports the use of broadcast data packets, and can timely and effectively relay short-term asynchronous broadcast ADV data packets from tags.
In addition, the currently simple tracking products on the market only transmit fixed ADV Beacon packets. In contrast, Bluetooth Mesh mode has more powerful security procedures. For example, each message is encrypted with a serial number and a key to prevent it. The occurrence of a message replay attack. Therefore, the tag will not be easily copied, and its location will not be easily tracked by a malicious receiver like a simple Beacon tag.
Bluetooth in a smart environment
There are currently no Bluetooth profiles specifically defined for RTLS, although some RFD-related work began in the smart environment, and its purpose is to predict the use of Bluetooth Mesh profiles. In any case, as an application layer protocol, Bluetooth Mesh profiles can coexist with other applications, and even if not all application profiles are standardized, a complete RTLS system can be built.
The compatibility of the core Bluetooth Low Energy stack layer is guaranteed to ensure integration with the mobile device ecosystem. This is a prominent advantage of low-power Bluetooth in many short-range wireless standards competition, as mentioned in the Bluetooth Mesh profile, even if a smart phone or even an old-fashioned phone is used as a boot configuration device (Provisioner), it can be safely Add the device to the Bluetooth Mesh network.
Meet the demanding requirements of the application
In general, RTLS is more stringent than lighting control requirements in terms of the number of tags in a typical enterprise-level deployment and the traffic generated by each tag. The label for patients and assets needs to be sent one or more times per second to ensure that the location is updated in real time. For example, in a typical medical setting, there may be hundreds of patients and assets tagged in a small area.
As a Mesh with network flooding feature, the throughput of the Bluetooth Mesh profile will be affected if the traffic engineering related issues are not properly considered in the application. However, there are some provisions in the configuration file, such as different types of nodes, including pure passive nodes, relay nodes, and low power nodes, which can make different Vendors perform additional application layer optimizations to achieve higher overall channel utilization and traffic throughput.
Finally, the system usually requires a gateway device to connect the interface of the Mesh network to Wi-Fi or other LAN, and finally to the cloud server, receive and store all ADV packets and their RSSI, and perform location calculation. It is not difficult to imagine that the standardization work will eventually define an RTLS profile that will standardize from protocol to gateway and will take full advantage of the new features of Bluetooth 5, such as extended broadcast packets and a large number of secondary broadcast channels. This allows the RTLS service provider to more fully use the Bluetooth Mesh profile to provide RTLS services to any device in the Bluetooth Mesh network through the cloud. Just like the Internet connection, real-time location services will become a key feature of every IoT device.
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