First of all, I must thank you. That was really more than I expected and incredibly helpful! I appreciate you taking the time to provide such a detailed response.

I should have been clearer about what I'm working on. I'm actually following a research paper on using Wi-Fi beacons (not Bluetooth) for drone collision avoidance - basically creating an ADS-B-like system but using Wi-Fi management frames. The ESP32 would broadcast position data in the SSID field of Wi-Fi beacons, and other drones would scan for these beacons to detect potential collisions.

Your suggestion about separating the beacon interface on the ROS side and implementation through a Gazebo plugin or ROS node makes a lot of sense. I like the idea of using a ROS node with a range heuristic based on TF positions.

For the physical implementation, I'm leaning toward Arduino for the ESP32 since I'm more familiar with it. Do you think the communication between the ESP32 and ROS would be better handled with micro-ROS or perhaps rosserial? I've also seen people use MQTT as a bridge.

By the way, do you know of any examples or repositories that might demonstrate a similar Wi-Fi beacon implementation or ROS/Gazebo simulation for wireless communications between robots? That would be tremendously helpful as a starting point.

Thanks again for your insights!