Ad hoc networking with Bluetooth: Key metrics and distributed protocols for scatternet formation

Bluetooth is a promising technology for personal/local area wireless communications. A Bluetooth scatternet is composed of simple overlapping piconets, each with a low number of devices sharing the same radio channel. A scatternet may have different topological configurations, depending on the number of composing piconets, the role of the devices involved and the configuration of the links. This paper discusses the scatternet formation issue by analyzing topological characteristics of the scatternet formed. A matrix-based representation of the network topology is used to define metrics that are applied to evaluate the key cost parameters and the scatternet performance. Numerical examples are presented and discussed, highlighting the impact of metric selection on scatternet performance. Then, a distributed algorithm for scatternet topology optimization is introduced, that supports the formation of a "locally optimal" scatternet based on a selected metric. Numerical results obtained by adopting this distributed approach to "optimize" the network topology are shown to be close to the global optimum. © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.