The Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) utility model establishes and maintains a local database on each physical device in a mesh network. The database contains MAC and element address pairs of other devices within the radio range.

By using this model, you can identify the physical device that was responsible for sending or forwarding a message to another device based on the element addresses.

Table of contents

The local database of the model is generated by sending out the database beacon request. This request is sent out whenever the interface of the model receives a MAC address whose corresponding element address context does not appear in the local database.

The database beacon request is a broadcast message that reaches all other mesh devices within the radio proximity. All devices that receive the database beacon request respond by sending a database beacon, a return message that contains the MAC or the element context of the mesh device.

The database beacon is also a broadcast message, which means it is received not only by the mesh device that requested the database beacon, but by every device within the radio proximity.

The intention for using a many-to-many implementation for exchanging MAC and element contexts between mesh devises is to:

ensure that the information in all databases is up-to-date;
prevent the database beacon request events from occurring frequently.

See the following figure for the depiction of the radio reach of each device (dotted circle in the matching color).

Figure 1: Overview of a mesh network consisting of five devices.

Based on this radio reach, see the following figure for the event timeline and what happens when the model is not able to find an element address that corresponds to a MAC address.

Figure 2: Event timeline of the message transaction.

Note: The model was created with the assumption that the database beacon exchanges should primarily occur on bootup of a mesh device.

The messages in this model only reach mesh devices within the radio proximity. The mapping of a MAC address to a Mesh address is guaranteed by setting the TTL value of the messages to 0, which ensures that no devices relay them beyond the radio proximity. This way, you can pair up the element address within the message with the MAC address contained in the metadata that follows the message. This is because the model that sent the database beacon must be both the first and the last device involved in the message exchange.

The mapping of MAC addresses to Mesh unicast addresses is only useful for MAC addresses that stay the same for all messages. As RANDOM_PRIVATE MAC addresses are supposed to change for every message to maintain anonymity, they can be ignored. Although other address types are technically allowed to change between packets, this happens so rarely that you can map them to Mesh addresses with acceptable accuracy.

Properties and features

The ID of the RSSI util model is 0x0007.

The RSSI util model is implemented as a single controller model. It is designed to function only with MAC addresses of the adjacent physical devices in the mesh. If you input a MAC address of a device that is not within one radio hop of the origin, the model will not be able to retrieve the corresponding element address.

The address database is not contained in persistent memory and it will be wiped on reset.

Implementing the model

Before implementing the model, take note of the following requirements:

To work properly, this model must be implemented in every mesh node of a network.
All instances of this model must publish and subscribe to the same group address in the mesh.

Note: The steps that mention the API functions after the initialization and the allocation steps (steps 1 and 2) are handled by the Configuration Model, but are reported here for the local configuration of each device.

To implement the RSSI util model on a device:

Initialize the model with the rssi_util_init() function from the model API.
Allocate a subscription list with the access_model_subscription_list_alloc() API function.
Bind and set the application key for the model with the access_model_application_bind() and the access_model_publish_application_set() API functions.
Set the publication address for the model with the access_model_subscription_add() API function.
Set the subscription address for the model with the access_model_publish_address_set() API function.

Message format

The RSSI util model uses the following types of messages:

Database beacon request
Database beacon

Database beacon request message

This message initiates a database beacon from other mesh devices.

Member name	Type	Description
-	-	This message is empty.

Database beacon message

This message contains the element address context of a mesh device.

Member name	Type	Description
address_start	uint16_t	The first address in the range of unicast addresses.
count	uint16_t	The number of addresses in the range of unicast addresses.

Message opcodes

Message name	Opcode	Direction of message
Database beacon request	0x8040	Controller -> Controller
Database beacon	0x8041	Controller -> Controller