A general methodology and key metrics for scatternet formation in Bluetooth

To fully exploit the capabilities of Bluetooth for the deployment of wireless ad-hoc networks, the scatternet concept has been proposed. A scatternet is constituted by an overlapping of simple structures called piconets, each composed of up to eight devices sharing the same radio channel. A scatternet may present different topological configurations, depending on the number of composing piconets, the role of involved devices and the configuration of the links. This paper presents a general methodology for scatternet formation and proposes metrics that can be used to evaluate scatternet performance. Several numerical examples are presented and discussed, highlighting the impact of metric selection on scatternet performance.