Bluetooth® Mesh device authentication & secure network commissioning
Kamaldeep Bansal · 2024
Bluetooth®Low Energy [3] is among one of the revolutionary technologies in IoT ecosystem due to its merits like availability in every smartphone, Low power consumption, security etc. With the introduction of Mesh protocol in Bluetooth®, the existing capability of one-to-one or one-to-many is extended to many-to-many communication. With this technology, day by day more and more devices are becoming part of mesh network. This helps in better control and monitoring of devices like lights, sensors, home appliances, door locks etc. to build smart homes, smart buildings, smart offices, or industry 4.0. One of the most critical and concerning issues while talking about any IoT technology is security. Any security breach in IoT technology could have ruinous effects and is not acceptable. To create a secure mesh network, one needs to take care of all the security measures right from the commissioning of Mesh network. All such measures & scenarios are taken care of in the proposed solution.These Bluetooth®enabled devices become members of the mesh network once the network security and node configuration details are provided to them. This process of validation and giving security credentials of the Bluetooth®mesh network to the mesh device is known as Provisioning. The node that has the capability to do provisioning of other nodes is called the provisioner. Secure network commissioning begins with authenticating a genuine device before sharing any network security credentials and configuration information with it. Once identified, a secure channel is created between the provisioner and the device. Then all the required information is shared using encrypted messages. Using these authentication and encryption methods can help in commissioning a secure Mesh Network called Provisioning Procedure.