On-demand formation of Bluetooth scatternet

Contention based MAC protocols like IEEE 802. 11 have been shown to perform badly in multi-hop wireless ad hoc networks. Immediate alternative approaches are contention-free MAC protocols such as fixed TDMA and CDMA. The Bluetooth scatternet structure, integrating polling scheme and FHSS in its MAC layer, provides a contention-free environment for Bluetooth devices to access the medium and communicate over multi-hop paths. Detailed scatternet formation and scheduling mechanisms, which were left open by Bluetooth specification, call for intensified research activities. We propose an on-demand scatternet-route formation protocol. Important design issues such as route discovery, multi-hop link setup, local structure adjustment as well as a new route-based scatternet-scheduling algorithm are described in detail. We also examine the scatternet setup delay, end-to-end packet transfer delay, and the route throughput. Simulations verify the feasibility of our design and match well with our network performance analyses.