Bluetooth-based mobile ad hoc networks: opportunities and challenges for a telecommunications operator

We present results of our initial investigations on Bluetooth-based mobile ad hoc networks (MAN). By building a simple demonstrator of a Bluetooth-based MAN, we find that current implementations of the Bluetooth stack have many shortcomings limiting the practical use of MANs. In particular, protocols for setting up the MAN and establishing routing paths for data packets should be tightly integrated with the lower layers of the stack. Once these issues are solved however, Bluetooth-based MANs may prove a very powerful concept for enabling cheap peer-to-peer communications.