An enhanced and energy efficient communication architecture for Bluetooth wireless PANs

Bluetooth is a radio technology for Wireless Personal Area Networking (WPAN) operating in the 2.4 GHz ISM frequency band, and allows devices to be connected into short-range ad hoc networks. The Bluetooth medium access control protocol is based on the Master/Slave paradigm wherein any communication between slave devices has to go through the Master. While this model provides for simplicity, it incurs a longer delay between any two slave devices due to far from optimal packet forwarding, the use of double the bandwidth, and also additional energy wastage at the Master. Moreover, if more than two devices want to communicate as a group, this can only be achieved by either multiple unicast transmissions or a piconet-wide broadcast, clearly resulting in inefficiency. In this paper, we propose a novel Dynamic Slot Assignment (DSA) scheme whereby the Master device dynamically assigns slots to Slaves so as to allow them to communicate directly with each other without any Master intervention. This proposed communication architecture also provides for Quality of Service (QoS) requests, admission control, and multi-device conversation by which a multicast-like communication is implemented within a piconet. Through extensive simulation, we observe that DSA drastically enhances Bluetooth performance in terms of delay and throughput, while significantly reducing power consumption at the master and the overall piconet.     

Bluetooth scatternets: criteria, models and classification

Bluetooth ad hoc networks are constrained by a master/slave configuration, in which one device is the master and controls the communication with the slave devices. The master and up to seven active slave devices can form a small Bluetooth network called a piconet. In order to build larger network topologies, called scatternets, the piconets must be interconnected. Scatternets are formed by allowing certain piconet members to participate in several piconets by periodically switching between them. Due to the fact that there is no scatternet formation procedure in the Bluetooth specification, numerous different approaches have been proposed. We discuss criteria for different types of scatternets and establish general models of scatternet topologies. Then we review the state-of-the-art approaches with respect to Bluetooth scatternet formation and compare and contrast them.     

A Bluetooth scatternet-route structure for multihop ad hoc networks

Bluetooth scatternets, integrating polling, and frequency hopping spread-sprectrum in their medium access control protocol, provide a contention-free environment for Bluetooth devices to access the medium and communicate over multihop links. Currently, most available scatternet formation protocols tend to interconnect all Bluetooth devices at the initial network startup stage and maintain all Bluetooth links thereafter. Instead of this "big scatternet" approach, we propose a scatternet-route structure to combine the scatternet formation with on-demand routing, thus eliminating unnecessary link and route maintenances. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first effort to address on-demand scatternet formation with every detail. We introduce an extended ID (EID) connectionless broadcast scheme, which, compared with original Bluetooth broadcast mechanism, achieves very much shortened route discovery delay. We also propose to synchronize the piconets along each scatternet route to remove piconet switch overhead and obtain even better channel utilization. Furthermore, we present a route-based scatternet scheduling scheme to enable fair and efficient packet transmissions over scatternet routes. Network performance analysis and simulations show that scatternet routes can provide multihop wireless channels with high network utilization and extremely stable throughput, being especially useful in the transmission of large batches of packets and real time data in wireless environment.     

Bluegon: a polygon-shaped scatternet formation algorithm for Bluetooth

Bluetooth is one of the cable-replacement technologies. It uses short-range radio links to replace connecting cables. Bluetooth enables portable devices to form short-range wireless ad hoc networks. A set of Bluetooth devices sharing a common channel can form a personal area network called a piconet. Several piconets can also be interconnected to establish a scatternet. Zaruba, Basaghi and Chlamtac proposed a mechanism for forming a distributed scatternet called the Bluetree. The algorithm is based on selecting an arbitrary node serving as the Blueroot. The Blueroot initiates the construction of the Bluetree. Though the algorithm is very simple, there are some weak points. For example, being a tree limits its routing choices. There are also the problems of overloading on the Blueroot and the many master/slave bridges on any routing path. In this paper, we will improve the weaknesses of Bluetree by eliminating the bottleneck in the Blueroot and by reducing the number of bridges to half for almost any path. We call the new algorithm Bluegon since polygons (cycles) will be formed in the scatternet. Simulation results indicate the efficiencies of our algorithm. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

一种基于Bluetooth的路由技术

Bluetooth是一种用于短距离无线通信的新技术,该文首先描述Bluetooth通信技术中Piconet网络和Scatternet网络的特征,并针对这些特征,分析了路由方法设计的基本原则,然后提出了一种IPover Bluetooth的路由方法,重点分析了在Piconet中,Scatternet中、跨Scatternet几种情况下的路由发现和数据传递的方法,并提出Bluetooth单元的跨Scatternet漫游方法。     

BlueMesh: Degree-Constrained Multi-Hop Scatternet Formation for Bluetooth Networks

In this paper we describe BlueMesh, a new protocol for the establishment of scatternets, i.e., multi-hop wireless networks of Bluetooth devices. BlueMesh defines rules for device discovery, piconet formation and piconet interconnection so to generate connected scatternets with the following desirable properties. BlueMesh forms scatternets without requiring the Bluetooth devices to be all in each other transmission range. BlueMesh scatternet topologies are meshes with multiple paths between any pair of nodes. BlueMesh piconets are made up of no more than 7 slaves. Simulation results in networks with over 200 nodes show that BlueMesh is effective in quickly generating a connected scatternet in which each node, on average, does not assume more than 2.4 roles. Moreover, the route length between any two nodes in the network is comparable to that of the shortest paths between the nodes.     

Distributed self-healing and variable topology optimization algorithms for QoS provisioning in scatternets

Bluetooth is an enabling technology for Personal Area Networks. A scatternet is an ad hoc network created by interconnecting several Bluetooth piconets, each with at most eight devices. Each piconet uses a different radio channel constituted by a frequency hopping code. The way the devices are grouped in different piconets and the way the piconets are interconnected greatly affect the performance of the scatternet in terms of capacity, data transfer delay, and energy consumption. There is a need to develop distributed scatternet formation algorithms, which guarantee full connectivity of the devices, reconfigure the network due to mobility and failure of devices, and interconnect them such a way to create an optimal topology to achieve gainful performance. The contribution of this paper is to provide an integrated approach for scatternet formation and quality-of-service support (called SHAPER-OPT). To this aim, two main procedures are proposed. First, a new scatternet formation algorithm called self-healing algorithm producing multihop Bluetooth scatternets (SHAPER) is developed which forms tree-shaped scatternets. A procedure that produces a meshed topology applying a distributed scatternet optimization algorithm (DSOA) on the network built by SHAPER is then defined. Performance evaluation of the proposed algorithms, and of the accordingly created scatternets, is carried out by using ns2 simulation. Devices are shown to be able to join or leave the scatternet at any time, without compromising the long term connectivity. Delay for network setup and reconfiguration in dynamic environments is shown to be within acceptable bounds. DSOA is also shown to be easy to implement and to improve the overall network performance.     

Efficient Scheduling Algorithms for Bluetooth Scatternets

When more than seven devices are connected in a Bluetooth scatternet, bridge devices are used to connect two piconets to the scatternet. To deal with possible data transmissions between different piconets, the bridge device must frequently switch to different masters. Suppose, however, that a bridge is serving a piconet and the master in another piconet is calling it at the same time, the calling master has to wait until the bridge completes the previous service. Such transmission delay may accumulate over a long period and the performance of the whole Bluetooth network will degrade significantly. In this work, two new scheduling protocols, namely the static schedule and the hybrid schedule were implemented in an effort to smooth this kind of transmission delay in Bluetooth networks. In this static schedule the rendezvous points between piconets are coordinated by distributing them by using a graph edge coloring technique. In case of a heavy traffic load, the static schedule is expected to perform well. On the other hand, in case of a light traffic load, the static schedule may cause long and unavoidable routing delays even when there is no transmission between piconets; in this case a naive random round-robin (RR) schedule in each piconet is more appropriate. Thus, in the hybrid schedule, each master initially runs a RR scheme in its piconet. When the traffic load is heavier than a predefined threshold value, it runs the static schedule. Finally, simulations were conducted by using an ns-2 simulator and Bluehoc to demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed scheduling protocols.

Interference modeling and performance of Bluetooth MAC protocol

The emergence of Bluetooth as a default radio interface has allowed handheld electronic devices to be instantly interconnected as ad hoc networks. These short-range ad hoc wireless networks, called piconets, operate in the unlicensed 2.4-GHz ISM (Industrial-Scientific-Medical) band where devices may be used to configure single or overlapping piconets, known as scatternet. As all piconets operate in the same frequency band, the presence of multiple piconets in the vicinity may create interference on signal reception. This paper employs a signal capture model to study the piconet MAC performance, taking inter-piconet interference into consideration. This model leads to several important mathematical relationships for Bluetooth networks, including successful packet transmission probability. Furthermore, our model and anticipated throughput are validated using extensive simulation. These results indicate that Bluetooth throughput is affected by multiple piconet interference. Definitely, our model can be considered to provide a solid foundation for future interference aware Bluetooth protocols.     

Bottom-Up Construction of Bluetooth Topology under a Traffic-Aware Scheduling Scheme

We propose a Bluetooth topology construction protocol that works in conjunction with a priority-based polling scheme. A master assigns a priority to its slaves including bridges for each polling cycle and then polls them as many times as the assigned priority. The slaves can spend their idle time either in a power-saving mode or perform new node discovery. The topology construction algorithm works in a bottom-up manner in which isolated nodes join to form small piconets. These small piconets can combine to form larger piconets. Larger piconets can start sharing bridge nodes to form a scatternet. Individual piconets can also discover new nodes while participating in the master-driven polling process. The shutting down of master and slave nodes is detected for dynamic restructuring of the scatternet. The protocol can handle situations when all the Bluetooth nodes are not within radio range of each other     

Energy-aware on-demand scatternet formation and routing for Bluetooth-based wireless sensor networks

Bluetooth is a promising short-range wireless communication technology with the characteristics of interference resilience and power efficiency, both desirable for wireless sensor networks. The new Intel Mote sensor devices have Bluetooth technology incorporated as the standard wireless communications interface. When using Bluetooth in applications where multihop routing is required, groups of Bluetooth piconets combine together to form a scatternet. However, most of the existing scatternet formation protocols are designed to facilitate communications between any two pairs of devices, regardless of the actual traffic demand pattern. For wireless sensor network applications with low-duty-cycle traffic patterns, an on-demand scatternet formation protocol can achieve significant power saving by avoiding unnecessary network connectivity. To that end, we introduce an on-demand scatternet and route formation protocol designed specifically for Bluetooth-based wireless sensor networks. Our protocol builds a scatternet on demand, and is able to cope with multiple sources initiating traffic simultaneously. In addition, our energy-aware forwarding nodes selection scheme is based on local information only, and results in more uniform network resource utilization and improved network lifetime. Simulation results show that our protocol can provide scatternet formation with reasonable delay and good load balance, which results in prolonged network lifetime for Bluetooth-based wireless sensor networks.     

BlueStar: Enabling Efficient Integration Between Bluetooth WPANs and IEEE 802.11 WLANs

Bluetooth is a radio technology for Wireless Personal Area Networking (WPAN) operating in the 2.4 GHz ISM frequency band. So far, there has been little research on how Bluetooth-enabled devices can effectively and efficiently have uninterrupted access to wide area networks (WAN) such as the Internet. We introduce a novel architecture (BlueStar) whereby selected Bluetooth devices, called Bluetooth Wireless Gateways (BWGs), are also IEEE 802.11 enabled so that these BWGs could serve as egress/ingress points to/from the IEEE 802.11 wireless network. We propose mitigating interference between Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11, by employing a hybrid approach of adaptive frequency hopping (AFH) and Bluetooth carrier sense (BCS) of the channels. AFH labels channels as bad or good, and Bluetooth devices only access those channels in the good state, whereas BCS is used to avoid collision by sensing the channel prior to any transmission. By combining AFH and BCS, we drastically minimize the effect of the worst-case interference scenario wherein both a Bluetooth and an IEEE 802.11 interface are co-located in a single device. BlueStar enables Bluetooth devices, belonging to either a piconet or a scatternet, to access the WAN through the BWG without the need for any fixed Bluetooth access points, while utilizing widely deployed base of IEEE 802.11 networks. Moreover, we define the protocol stack employed by BlueStar as well as indicate how BWGs efficiently manage their capacity allocation through the different systems. We also mathematically derive an upper bound on the number BWGs needed in a Bluetooth scatternet so that uninterrupted access to all Bluetooth devices could be provided.     

Load-adaptive inter-piconet scheduling in small-scale Bluetooth scatternets

Bluetooth enables wireless communication via ad hoc networks. The basic topology (piconet) is a collection of slaves controlled by a master. A scatternet is a multihop network of piconets. We anticipate that most scatternets will be composed of only a few piconets. However, even in small scatternets, efficient data flow requires the design of inter-piconet scheduling algorithms. Thus, this article presents and evaluates a load adaptive scheduling algorithm tailored for small-scale scatternets. The main advantage of this algorithm is the use of the Bluetooth low-power hold mode, which allows greater flexibility than other low-power modes. A simulation model has been developed in order to evaluate the performance of the algorithm. We show that the results obtained by the model are very close to the analytic results. Then we evaluate the performance of various intra-piconet scheduling algorithms. Finally, we present simulation results regarding inter-piconet scheduling, and compare the proposed algorithm to algorithms using the sniff mode.     

An adaptive sniff scheduling scheme for power saving in Bluetooth

Bluetooth is expected to be an important basic constructing component for smart homes. In a smart home environment, many devices will be portable and battery-operated, making power saving an essential issue. The authors study the problem of managing the low-power sniff mode in Bluetooth, where a slave is allowed to be awake only periodically. One challenging problem is how to schedule each slave's sniffing period in a piconet so as to resolve the trade-off between traffic and power-saving requirements, to which we refer as the sniff-scheduling problem. We propose an adaptive protocol to dynamically adjust each slave's sniff parameters, with a goal of catching the varying, and even asymmetric, traffic patterns among the master and slaves. Compared to existing works, our work is unique. First, our scheduling considers multiple slaves simultaneously. Existing work only considers one slave, and different slaves are treated independently. Second, our scheduling is more accurate and dynamic in determining the sniff-related parameters based on slaves' traffic patterns. Most work is restricted to a naive exponential adjustment in sniff interval/sniff-attempt window. Third, our proposal includes the placement of sniff-attempt periods of sniffed slaves on the time axis when multiple slaves are involved. This issue is ignored by earlier work. Extensive simulation results are presented.     

Comparative Performance Evaluation of Scatternet Formation Protocols for Networks of Bluetooth Devices

This paper describes the results of the first ns2-based comparative performance evaluation among four major solutions presented in the literature for forming multi-hop networks of Bluetooth devices (scatternet formation). The four protocols considered in this paper are BlueTrees [1], BlueStars [2], BlueNet [3] and the protocol presented in [4] which proposes geometric techniques for topology reduction combined with cluster-based scatternet formation. We implemented the operations of the four protocols from device discovery to scatternet formation. By means of a thorough performance evaluation we have identified protocol parameters and Bluetooth technology features that affect the duration of the formation process and the properties of the produced scatternet. We have investigated how possible modifications of the BT technology (e.g., backoff duration, possibility for a BT inquirer to identify itself) make device discovery more efficient for scatternet formation in multi-hop networks. We have then discussed implementation concerns for each of the selected protocols. Finally, we have analyzed the protocols overhead as well as the effect of the different protocols operations on key metrics of the generated scatternets, which includes the time needed for forming a scatternet, the number of its piconets, the number of slaves per piconet, the number of roles assumed by each node and the scatternet route lengths.     

Performance of Bluetooth Bridges in Scatternets with Limited Service Scheduling

The performance of two Bluetooth piconets linked through a bridge device is analyzed using the tools of queueing theory. We analyze both possible cases, i.e., when the bridge device is the master in one of the piconets and a slave in the other (MS bridge), as well as when the bridge device is the slave in both of the piconets (SS bridge). Analytical results are derived for the probability distribution of access delay (i.e., the time that a packet has to wait before being serviced) and end-to-end delay, for both intra- and inter-piconet bursty traffic. The scatternet with an SS bridge was found to provide lower end-to-end delay for local traffic as well as lower access delay, while the scatternet with an MS bridge offers lower end-to-end delay for non-local traffic. The scatternet with an SS bridge was also found to be less sensitive to increased probability of non-local traffic and low values of time interval between bridge exchanges, than its counterpart with an MS bridge. All analytical results have been confirmed through simulations.     

A Novel Scatternet Scheme with IPv6 Compatibility

Some market analysts predict that there will be some 1.4 billion Bluetooth devices in operation by the year 2005 [8]. However, the current specification1.1 does not describe the algorithms or mechanisms to create a scatternet due to a variety of unsolved issues [3,12]. Since the upper layers are not defined in Bluetooth, it is not possible to implement the scatternet in current specification. Hence in this research, we need make some modifications to Bluetooth protocol in order to support the transmissions of packets in the scatternet. In this paper we describe a novel scatternet architecture, and present link performance of the proposed architecture. The issues of the routing algorithm, handoffs, and communications with other networks are also discussed.     

链形结构的蓝牙分散网拓扑构成算法与性能仿真

提出了一种新的链形结构的蓝牙分散网拓扑构成算法：所有蓝牙节点均以0．5的概率进入查询或查询扫描状态，同时地进行点对点的连接，形成尽可能多的临时皮网，再反复通过各种形式的合并与重组形成更大的皮网与多个皮网形成的组，直至最终形成仅有一个组的链形结构的分散网。仿真与性能分析表明：该算法实现简单，形成的分散网具有较少的皮网数目、较小的各节点角色的平均数与较小的节点最大度数、网络创建时间较短、拓扑动态维护方便、各节点无需均在通信范围内等优点。该算法适用于蓝牙分散网的拓扑构成。     

Analysis of the Bluetooth device discovery protocol

Device discovery and connection establishment are fundamental to communication between two Bluetooth (BT) devices. In this paper, we give an analytical model of the time it takes for the master in a piconet to discover one slave. We show that, even in the absence of packet interference, the discovery time can be long in some instances. We have simulated the discovery protocol by actually implementing it to validate the analytical model. By means of simulations, we show how discovery time is affected by (i) the presence of multiple potential slaves, and (ii) changes in the maximum backoff limit. Using simulation studies we observed the effectiveness of two proposed improvements to device discovery, namely, (i) avoiding repetitions of the A and B trains before a train switch, and (ii) eliminating the idea of random backoff, or reducing the backoff limit. We show that discovery time can be reduced by avoiding repetitions of the A and B trains before a train switch. However, complete elimination of the random backoff is not a good idea, as discovery time will be too long when the number of BT devices is large. Instead, choosing a small backoff limit of 250–300 slots is highly effective in reducing discovery time even in the presence of a large number (say, 50) of potential slaves.