Cooperative clustering protocol for mobile devices with bluetooth and Wi-Fi interface in mLearning

One of the most widely used wireless communication standard is WLAN (IEEE 802.11 b/g). However, WLAN has a serious power consumption issue in mobile device. This paper proposes an energy saving approach based on clustering. A cluster is a Bluetooth Personal Area Network (PAN) consisting of a cluster head and several regular nodes. The cluster head acts as a gateway between the PAN and the WLAN. The proposed approach presents a Cooperative Clustering protocol (CCP) which dynamically reforms clusters according to the node´s distance, and energy use. As clustering is performed independently of WLAN access points, CCP does not require modifications in existing wireless infrastructure.