Long Range and Mesh? A Viewer's Bluetooth Question Answered

Editor’s note: In April, 2017, Mouser hosted the webinar, “ Bluetooth 5: Reinventing Connectivity and Advancing Industrial IoT.” This is one of many great questions (and answers) that came from the webinar.

Viewer Question: Do you know if it will be possible to have long range and mesh (when SIG releases) simultaneously with Bluetooth 5?

Answer: Thanks for your question…it's a good one! The general answer is "yes but."

As you know, range is determined by many factors, and mesh networking works to minimize their effects so that a network can be expanded in area and number of connected devices by reducing the distance over which any connected node must communicate. That is, nodes are connected together rather than as in a star topology to go back to a hub or gateway. This effectively reduces the need to have “long-range” capabilities.

For example, let’s say a Bluetooth device transmitting at its highest permissible output power covers (in this instance) 400ft. To have some margin, you wouldn’t place devices that far apart because you want the Bluetooth-enabled sensors to use as little DC power as possible. The mesh makes this possible.

For more information about Bluetooth, visit the Mouser RF Wireless site.