Optimization of the AODV-Based Packet Forwarding Mechanism for BLE Mesh Networks

Muhammad Rizwan Ghori,Gian Chand Sodhy,Amna Rizwan,Tat-Chee Wan

doi:10.3390/electronics10182274

Muhammad Rizwan Ghori, Gian Chand Sodhy + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10182274

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Abstract

The standard Bluetooth Low-Energy mesh networks assume the use of flooding for multihop communications. The flooding approach causes network overheads and delays due to continuous message broadcasting in the absence of a routing mechanism. Among the routing protocols, AODV is one of the most popular and robust routing protocol for wireless ad hoc networks. In this paper, we optimized the AODV protocol for Bluetooth Low-Energy communication to make it more efficient in comparison to the mesh protocol. With the proposed protocol (Optimized AODV (O-AODV)), we were able to achieve lower overheads, end-to-end delay, and average per-hop one-way delay in comparison to the BLE mesh (flooding) protocol and AODV protocol for all three scenarios (linear topology with ten nodes, multipath topology with six and ten nodes). In addition, the proposed protocol exhibited practically constant route requests and route reply setup times. Furthermore, the proposed protocol demonstrated a better Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) for O-AODV (84%) in comparison to AODV (71%), but lower than the PDR of the mesh (flooding) protocol with 93%.

Highlights

Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) is a Wireless Ad Hoc Network (WAHN) technology that is becoming increasingly popular among IoT devices that run on batteries
BLE Mesh Network and AODV Layer Optimization in order to reduce the likelihood of unwanted retransmissions, we reduced the channel utilization and probability of collision due to retransmissions, as well as the packet loss by lowering the packet’s time-to-live in both the application and network layers after making the necessary changes in the mesh protocol’s network layer’s bt_mesh_net_send and bt_mesh_net _recv functions
Experimental Results: O-AODV Multipath Topology with Six Nodes we show the results of the experiments with the six-node AODV

Summary

Introduction

Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) is a Wireless Ad Hoc Network (WAHN) technology that is becoming increasingly popular among IoT devices that run on batteries. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) introduced the BLE standard in Bluetooth Version 4.0, which was further improved in Bluetooth Versions 4.2 and 5 [1]. For multihop communications and network connections, BLE 4.x initially used the traditional Bluetooth-based Personal Area Network (PAN) paradigm. BLE 5 aims to address these flaws by implementing a flooding-based mesh architecture, which will enable better coverage of the network, standardized intercluster communications, and improved security [2]. The model, foundation model, and access, upper/lower transport, network, and bearer layers make up the BLE mesh system architecture, which sits on top of the BLE network stack [3]. The BLE mesh protocol assumes the use of flooding for multihop communications. The flooding approach results in network overheads and delays due to continuous message broadcasting in the absence of a proper routing mechanism

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