Bluetooth: an enabler for personal area networking
Johansson, P.; Kazantzidis, M.; Kapoor, R.; Gerla, M.
Network, IEEE
Volume 15, Issue 5, Sep/Oct 2001 Page(s):28 - 37
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/65.953231
Summary:We find ourselves today often carrying numerous portable
electronic devices, such as notebook computers, mobile phones, PDAs,
digital cameras, and mp3/MD/DVD players, used to help and entertain us
in our professional as well as private lives. For the most part, these
devices are used separately, and their applications do not interact.
Imagine, however, if they could interact directly and thus create a
network where information may flow seamlessly between the devices-such a
network of personal devices is often referred to as a personal area
network, or PAN. Moreover, access to the Internet via a (public)
wireless LAN access point and/or via a 3G UMTS mobile phone would enable
the PAN to be constantly online. The strongest candidate to provide the
cheap short-range radio links necessary to enable such networks is the
Bluetooth wireless technology. Seen from a networking perspective, a PAN
will be expected to have participants, both of its “own”
devices and “guest” devices from other PANs, continuously
moving in and out of its coverage. To cope with this volatile nature of
the network, the concept of ad hoc networking may be applied to create
robust and flexible connectivity. A major technical step is taken when
the Bluetooth piconet network architecture, a strict star topology, is
extended into a scatternet architecture, where piconets are
interconnected. A consequence of creating scatternet-based PANs is that
some nodes will form gateways between piconets, and these gateways must
be capable of time sharing their presence In each piconet of which they
are members. While the Bluetooth standard defines the gateway nodes, the
actual mechanisms and algorithms that accomplish the interpiconet
scheduling (IPS) are left rather open. Given the lack of research
literature in the subject, an overall architecture for handling
scheduling in a scatternet is presented. A family of feasible IPS
algorithms, referred to as rendezvous point algorithms, is also
introduced and discussed
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