Proposal and Application of Bluetooth Mesh Profile for Smart Cities’ Services

Abstract

‘Smart cities’ is a concept that embraces many technologies and solutions in sensing and carrying a city’s data through a network for further processing and analysis. Smart cities’ main priority is citizens and environmental sustainability. In practice, wireless sensors networks over mesh networks are the approach employed most of the time. In terms of wireless communications technologies, Bluetooth low energy offers a robust, low cost, and low power consumption option. The recently published Bluetooth mesh profile specification addresses the most relevant challenges on that paradigm, adding secure multicast communications capabilities. A framework to create Smart Cities services was proposed and a traffic light service was used to demonstrate specification applicability for smart cities’ services. The proposed service showed that data may be collected and shared between devices in a mesh network through and over a metropolitan area. The specification’s strengths were demonstrated and some topics for further development were identified.