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Building a connected BLE mesh: A network inference study

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DOI: 10.1109/WCNCW.2018.8369004

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 Building a connected BLE mesh: a network
inference study
Alessandro Chiumento, Brecht Reynders, Yuri Murillo, and Sofie Pollin
KU Leuven, Department of Electrical Engineering, Kasteelpark Arenberg 10, 3001 Heverlee, Belgium
Email: alessandro.chiumento@esat.kuleuven.be
Abstract—Bluetooth low energy (BLE) is on the way of
becoming the next standard for low-power, low-datarate
applications. While not being designed directly for mesh
operation, recent works have shown that both connected
and broadcasts mesh are possible, this latter one being
ultimately included in the standard. For any robust opera-
tion in a connected BLE mesh network, especially for high
reliability and low-latency operations like healthcare, the
control parameters need to be carefully chosen in order
to avoid congestion and packet loss but the relationships
between controllable parameters and final network per-
formance have not yet been investigated in BLE mesh
networks. In this work, we show that it is possible to infer
the relationships between the controllable and observable
network parameters by using a mutual information based
structure learning approach; we show, in fact, how each
setting such as transmit power, connection interval, source
rate, impact overall network performance figures of merit
such as end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio and network
build time.
I. INTRODUCTION
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) was originally intro-
duced in the Bluetooth Core Specification 4.0 as a pos-
sible way to bring Bluetooh connectivity to low-power
devices which necessitate to operate for long periods of
time without battery replacement. Increasing interest has
been shown by the industrial community to use BLE
for critical, indoor applications such as localisation [1],
continuous biometric readings in health structures [2],
[3] and industry floor monitoring [4]. Particularly for
these indoor applications, it has been shown that, because
of the BLE devices’ limited range, a great number of
nodes is needed to cover office environments [5]; in
order to alleviate this problem, multi-hop communication
protocols have been presented in recent works [6], [7].
The first version of BLE mesh has recently been released
[8], although no commercially available node supports
it yet nor any use case has been reported at the time of
writing this paper.
While network inference, as structure learning, has
seen mounting interested in the research community
to learn interdependencies between variables in fields
such as genetics [9] and data mining [10], it has been
used in wireless networks mostly to infer the physical
topology rather than how the network variables influence
one another [11], [12]. Approaches to learn interactions
between network variables have been presented in [13]
[14] and [15]. In [13] a Bayesian Network has been
used to predict wireless network service reliability in 5G
networks by determining a causal relationship between
network measurements such as latency, signal to noise
ratio, throughput and reliability.
In [14] and [15] the usage of structure learning tech-
niques to infer interdependencies in network variables
in cognitive networks has been discussed. Both works
focus on the importance of using probabilistic graphical
models to infer the network structure but, in both cases,
the authors make strong assumptions about the nature
of the actual wireless network studied thus gravely
limiting the effectiveness of the proposed techniques
when applied to different communication technologies
or network topologies.
In this work a mutual information based structure
learning approach is used to infer the interdependencies
between network variables in a BLE mesh network from
actual measurements. The approach, based on [16], uses
information theoretic concepts to first determine the
statistical closeness of the network variables and, second,
assigns directionality between the variables. The struc-
ture of the network is recovered from available traffic
data time-series without making any assumption about
the underlying structure of the data or prior knowledge
about the system.
The main contribution of this work is to provide an
analysis of network inference as a tool to choose which
design and run-time parameters in a BLE mesh network
need to be addressed in order to provide concrete insight
on the network’s performance without relying on ad-hoc
assumptions or expert knowledge but allowing the net-
work dynamics to teach the system’s designer directly.
The remainder of this work is structured as follows.
Section II introduces the connected BLE mesh protocol
used for experimental testing. Section III provides an
account of mutual information-based inference and Sec-
tion IV depicts the measurement set-up and discusses the
network metrics available. Section V presents the results
and, finally, Section VI concludes this work.
 II. BLE CONNECTED M ESH N ETWORKING
A. Mesh network building and management
The connection based mesh scheme chosen for this
work was originally presented in [17]. The phases com-
posing the protocol are outlined below.
Node Initialisation: When a node is activated, it
generates automatically a Node ID and a Cluster ID.
The Node ID identifies the node in the network and the
Cluster ID identifies to which cluster the node is part
of. At starting time the Cluster size is set to 1. As new
nodes appear, the algorithm will force them to connect
to bigger clusters until, in fact, all nodes in the network
are part of the same cluster and thus reachable by every
other device.
Discovery Phase: After initialisation, a node broad-
casts its Node Id, Cluster Id and its Cluster size as adver-
tisements in the so called JoinMe packets. In the mean
while, it scans on all 3 broadcasting channels for similar
messages from its neighbours. This is continued until a
route is set-up. The discovery phase can have high to low
broadcasting interval duration depending on the stability
of the network: the longer the network remains stable,
the longer the time between advertisements. Figure 1
shows an example of the data exchanged by nodes during
discovery.
Fig. 1: Node state with connections.
Route Set-up: After a predefined interval, each node
decides to which Cluster to connect based on the re-
ceived advertisement packets. The neighbours are ranked
(based on signal strength and number of free connec-
tions) and the node with the highest ranking becomes
cluster head. The connection of two nodes belonging to
the same cluster is avoided as information on Cluster
ID is sent during the handshake. As a result the whole
network is loop free. If the Cluster IDs are indeed
different, the node with the smallest cluster size connects
to the bigger cluster, possibly disconnecting its neighbor
as only one connection as slave is allowed. Information
on the new cluster sizes is then propagated via update
messages over the connected mesh to the nodes on both
clusters.
Self-healing and Route Maintenance: As the network
reaches stability and all the nodes are part of the same
cluster, the discovery mode is switched to low increasing
the time between advertisements to reduce the overhead.
If a connection is lost then the connection partner or the
neighbours of a failed node switch to higher discovery
mode. As a self-healing mechanism, alternative routes
are generated every time a node disconnects. In this con-
text, regular exchange of advertising packets constitute
the key element for ensuring link maintenance and quick
reaction to link changes.
Routing: Routing is implemented in a neighbour-only
fashion. No routing tables are present and each node
is only aware of the nodes around it. When a sink is
present in the network, this information is broadcasted
over the network. Each node then, when it has data to
send, selects the neighbour with the smallest distance to
the sink (in number of hops) and sends all the packets
to that device.
B. Mesh Observable Parameters and Figures of Merit
The controllable and observable parameters used in
this work are dependent on the technology used for
communication, the application and the hardware im-
plementation of the protocols; they are summarised in
Table I and discussed below.
TABLE I: Controllable and Observable variables
Controllable Observable
Name Symbol Name Symbol
Transmit Power PT X Packed Delivery Ratio P DR
Connection Interval CI End-to-End Delay De2e
Source Rate Rs Hop Count Hcount
Slave Connections S Build Time BT
The controllable parameters are addressable directly
in each BLE node and impact local behaviour between
neighbouring nodes:
Transmit power PT X : in order to avoid hidden
nodes problems due to asymmetric power profiles in the
mesh network [18], the power of all nodes is set to be
identical and varied at the same time.
Connection Interval CI: the time between two data
transfer events is defined as Connection Interval [8]. A
lower CI means that more data can be communicated
within the same time as the transmissions are closer
together. The CI can range between 7.5ms and 4s [8].
Source Rate Rs : the amount of data generated by
a source is application dependent and may be tweaked
on demand. In this work the Source Rate is expressed
in packets per second.
Slave Connections S: each BLE node may have
multiple slaves, the number of possible slaves can influ-
ence the topology of the network at build-up time [19],
[17]. The maximum number of slave connections is then
denoted as S and is set equal for all the nodes in the
network.
The observable variables are the figures of merit which
indicate the performance of the network. They denote
how the network behave as a whole and are not linked
with a single node settings.
Packet Delivery Ratio P DR: The PDR represents
the ratio between the number of correctly received pack-
ets at the sink NRx,Sink and the number of total packets
generated at the source NTx,Source .
NRx,Sink
PDR = . (1)
NTx,Source
End-to-end Delay De2e : The De2e represents the
time difference between when a packet is generated at
the source tGen,Source and when it is correctly received at
the sink tRx,Sink ,
De2e = tRx,Sink − tGen,Source . (2)
Hop Count Hcount : given the multi-hop nature
of the mesh protocol, there might be multiple nodes
between a source and the sink. As the connected mesh
protocol investigated builds a network between neigh-
bouring nodes at start-up, the network topology may
be different every time the network is re-initialized.
The path between any source and sink may then be
completely different every time the network is rebuilt.
Build Time BT : as the network grows organically
(each new node tries to become part of the biggest
cluster), the network build time may vary considerably
depending on how the nodes connect to one another. The
Build Time BT is then defined as the time difference
between all nodes are turned on and the instant when all
nodes are part of a single fully-connected cluster.
III. N ETWORK I NFERENCE AND M UTUAL
I NFORMATION
The network inference tool used in this work infers the
relationships between the variables in three steps. First,
it represents the distances between the variables in terms
of their statistical closeness, then it determines how
strongly correlated the links variables are by providing
links between them. Finally, it refines the prediction of
the inferred links by assigning directionality.
A. Mutual Information as distance between variables
The interdependencies between the observed and con-
trollable variables are determined automatically from the
time-series measurement data about the network perfor-
mance. The method used, employs a mutual information
entropy reduction technique to deduce, from statistical
features of the data, how variables are correlated. In
order to define mutual information (M I), the Shannon
entropy H(X) of a random variable X needs to be
introduced:
X values of a random variable Y by knowing the past and
H(X) = − p(x) log p(x) (3)
x∈X
where p(x) is the probability of X = x; Shannnons
entropy measures the uncertainty in a process: the more
uncertain, the more information that process carries [20].
When two variables are considered, the concept of joint
entropy H(X, Y ), or how much uncertainty is associated
with multiple variables is used:
XX
H(X, Y ) = − p(x, y) log p(x, y) (4)
x∈X y∈Y
where p(x, y) is the joint probability of X = x and Y =
y happening at the same time. The Mutual Information,
which quantifies the amount of information one variable
contains about the other, can then be derived directly
from the joint entropy as [16]:
XX p(x, y)
M I(X, Y ) = − p(x, y) log (5)
p(y)p(y)
x∈X y∈Y
Intuitively, if two variables interact closely, their mutual
information will be large; if they are not related, their
mutual information will be theoretically zero [16]. The
distance between the two time-varying processes can
then be obtained by minimizing the distance between
the variables X and Y, defined as e−M I(X,Y ) , for all
possible values of the time-delay τ between the two
variables:
d(X, Y ) = min e−M I(X(t±τ ),Y (t)) (6)
τ
B. Reducing entropy to detect indirect interactions
Equation 5 implies that if the two random variables
X and Y are correlated, the joint entropy is actually
smaller than for uncorrelated variables [21]. By adding
a new variable X ∗ connected to Y , there must then be
an entropy reduction of:
H(Y |X ∗ ) − H(Y |X ∗ , X ∗ )
ER (Y, X ∗ ) = (7)
H(Y )
In which H(Y |X ∗ ) is the conditional entropy,
ER (Y, X ∗ ) is the entropy reduction of Y due to the
introduction of the new variable X ∗ . As the MI defines
the distance between the random variable the entropy
reduction ER defines the strength of the correlation, as
two random variables may be close but only indirectly
correlated [16].
C. Determining directionality
Mutual information is undirected, and thus it does
not provide information on which random variable is
influencing the other ones [22]. Time series, on the
other hand, can be used to extract causality by using
the transfer entropy, which is an asymmetrical measure
used to quantify the reduction in uncertainty in future
present values of X and Y . By determining the causal
relationship, in time, between the two random variables
it is then possible to assign directionality to the links
between variables [16], [23].
 TABLE II: Experimental settings
IV. M EASUREMENT S ETUP
Experiment Rs [pps] PT x [dBm] CI [ms] S
The testbed used for this work consists of an indoor
1 5 -20 10 7
lab with a total of 12 nodes with a grid-like topology as 2 5 -16 10 7
depicted in Figure 2. One node always acts as a sink, 3 5 -12 10 7
collecting the data while any other node in the network 4 5 -8 10 7
5 5 -4 10 7
may be used as a source. At any given moment, there 6 5 0 10 7
may be only one source active. The nRF52 development 7 1 4 10 3
boards manufactured by Nordic Semiconductor have 8 1 4 10 7
been used in this work [24] and each runs the connected 9 5 4 10 3
10 5 4 10 7
mesh protocol discussed above [17]. 11 10 4 10 3
12 10 4 10 7
13 1 4 100 3
14 1 4 100 7
15 5 4 100 3
16 5 4 100 7
17 10 4 100 3
Sink 18 10 4 100 7
19 1 4 500 7
1.5 m

20 5 4 500 7
21 10 4 500 7
22 5 4 10 7

Fig. 2: Measurement setup. All vertical and horizontal dis-

tances are set to 1.5 m.

The experimental scenarios were performed as fol-

lows, each node in the network has been initialized
at the same time with the same parameters, then a
node randomly chosen as source started transmitting data
(256 packets) which is relayed to the sink; the same
experiment is repeated 20 times to account for channel
variations (i.e. a total of 5120 packets per experiment).
Finally, the network performance is collected for each
run. Before the beginning of the next experiment, new
node parameters have been chosen and the process is
repeated. Table II presents the experiments performed
and the values of controllable parameters for each ex-
periment.

V. I NFERENCE R ESULTS Fig. 3: Network structure learned from measurements

This Section presents the results of the network infer-
ence engine discussed in Section III on the data collected
with the measurements presented in Section IV.
In Figure 3 the inferred structure of the network of
the observed and controlled variables is presented. The
thickness of the links connecting the nodes is indicative
of the strength of the dependency.
Connection Interval: The Connection Interval
presents strong impact on both the PDR and the End-
to-End delay, this is visible also from the mutual infor-
mation plot in Figure 4. From the figure it is visible
that the MI between the CI and the PDR is very high
(almost 1) for all ten time lags. This means that any
knowledge of the observed CI at time t provides well
correlated information about the behaviour of the PDR
between times t−5 and t+ 5 making the CI a very good
predictor of PDR performance.
Source Rate: The Source Rate impacts strongly the
PDR and weakly the End-to-End delay. From Figure 7 it
can be seen that the Source Rate is also a good predictor
for the PDR. It is interesting to note that the Source Rate
and the Connection Interval have strong correlation; this
means that they influence one another greatly and thus
need to be taken both into account if optimizing for PDR.
Transmit Power: The Transmit Power has effect
on the PDR and the De2e and quite lower impact on
the Hcount . This is due to the main effect that all
nodes seemed to be in communication range with one
another, thus reducing the effect of the Transmit Power.
It is important to notice then that, different physical
network topology would have considerable effect on the
Fig. 4: Normalised MI between the CI and the observed Fig. 6: Normalised MI between the PT X and the observed
variables variables

Fig. 5: Normalised MI between the Rs and the observed Fig. 7: Normalised MI between the S and the observed
variables variables

measurement results and thus the correlation between

power and the observed variables would be different network behaviour. Interestingly, because of the network
Slave Connections: The number of available slaves build-up protocol, the Build Time is entirely unaffected
connections impacts network performance in a way by all the other variables, as long as communication
similar to the Transmit Power for the topology used in with neighboring nodes is possible; this entails that a
the experiments. new protocol needs to be designed to optimise network
A note on the Build Time: It is possible to see build-up rather than adjusting controllable parameters.
from Figure 8 that the Build Time is not impacted by Communication protocol design, network topology and
any of the controllable parameters. Furthermore, any run-time application requirements such as Source Rate
present knowledge of the Build Time does not give any have strong impact on the network and the inference
indication of future behaviour as visible from the only method is able to discern which parameter influences
peak in the figure at time instant t = 0. This is solely due which figure of merit on real network data. The insight
to the connected mesh protocol which builds the network given by such techniques on actual network operation is
randomly without taking into account node characteris- then valuable to design future networking solutions.
tics or behaviour (such as RSSI, buffer occupancy ...).
This behaviour showcases that network inference can ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
be used as a powerful tool to determine the impact of
protocol choices on actual network performance This work is supported by IWT CELTIC O&O project
ASUA/RoCCS. Yuri Murillo is funded by a PhD fellow-
VI. C ONCLUSION ship of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO).
Network inference has been used in this work to
determine the impact of design choices and node settings
on one another and overall network performance in a
BLE connected mesh. The results show that the process
is powerful and able to infer relationships between
variables from data alone without expert knowledge. For
example, the inference system is able to pick up that in
order to keep PDR high and End-to-end Delay low the
Connection Interval needs to be carefully chosen. This
is not an unexpected result as similar observations have
been presented in [19] but the inference engine has de-
livered this observation without any prior knowledge of Fig. 8: Normalised MI between the BT and all the variables
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