  The Internet of Things (IoT) opens the doors to a digital revolution, but
requires a robust protocol to wirelessly interconnect a large number of
devices. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Mesh emerges as a suitable candidate,
solving the range limitations of original BLE. Nevertheless, the main
limitation is shifted to the scatternet architecture: how the considerable
number of end systems are interconnected to ensure the network efficiency and
scalability. As of today, some timid solutions have emerged, though the most
relevant parameters for the best parent selection in BLE mesh network joining
procedures have not been identified yet. In this work, we perform a thorough
exploration of different device and environmental parameters in a BLE mesh
testbed to analyze their impact in the overall network figures of merit, such
as end-to-end delay and packet delivery ratio (PDR). According to the inferred
relevance, the second part of the work implements and measures the proposed
parent selection algorithm. The implementation is based on the open source
Fruitymesh protocol and is used as a baseline. The results reflect an
enhancement in the network scalability and fairness, accomplishing a delay and
PDR improvement of 26% and 10% respectively, and the avoidance of saturated
branches of 24%.
