Mesh networking with Bluetooth has a bright future. By taking advantage of existing lighting systems you open the door to huge added value possibilities, both for your business and its customers.

While mesh networking is nothing new, it is only now starting to be adopted in industrial and commercial environments. Bluetooth Mesh offers a low power mesh network with the potential to deliver many and varied added value services.

Some people in the industry view mesh networking as the next ‘shiny object’, nothing more than another excuse to raise prices. But mesh does deliver significant benefits over star or peer-to-peer networks and looks set to make a real impact on the industrial IoT and in the smart home in the years to come.

The reason is simple: mesh networks solve a specific problem. A conventional wireless router offers limited coverage if you can’t hardwire additional access points to it, which drives up complexity and expense in large spaces such an office building. On the other hand, mesh networks bring wireless connectivity to such a space far more simply than ever before.

Like all communication technologies, Bluetooth is a better fit for some applications than others. If you're considering using Bluetooth, here’s an outline of the primary factors that determine the effective range of Bluetooth communications, plus some ways to improve it with networking. This article is now updated with the addition of Bluetooth 5 performance.