New Bluetooth inter-piconet schedule with a slave to slave piconet formation

The growing use of information intensive consumer devices such as cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and laptop computers have called for a new networking paradigm for their interconnection. Up to 8 Bluetooth devices can form a centralized network, called a piconet, controlled by a master node, which allocates transmission slots to all other nodes (slaves) in the piconet. Bluetooth achieves robustness against interference from nearby devices by employing a frequency hopping code division multiple access (FH-CDMA) technique. This facilitates a high density of communicating devices, making it possible for dozens of piconets to co-exist and independently communicate in close proximity without significant performance degradation. In this paper we investigate two important performance measures: the amount of time to form a scatternet to minimize the delay experienced by the user; and the number of messages sent between the devices. By reducing the number of messages sent, power consumption is conserved. We propose new policies where the slave could enter in contact with other slaves without passing through the master. This is an alternative approach to inter-piconet schedules: the SSPF (slave to slave piconet formation). These policies can have a significant impact on the packets delays, throughput and power management.