Topology Configuration and Multihop Routing Protocol for Bluetooth Low Energy Networks

This paper proposes a new cluster-based on-demand routing protocol to support multihop communication in Bluetooth low energy ad hoc networks. The proposed scheme includes the topology configuration procedure, topology recovery scheme, and on-demand routing protocol. The topology configuration procedure consists of node discovery, piconet configuration, and scatternet formation in a randomly distributed environment. The proposed on-demand routing protocol is designed to minimize the number of route request messages by forwarding them to a master and relay nodes in each cluster during the route request procedure. The performance evaluation shows that our proposed scheme substantially reduces energy consumption, which is the most critical issue on energy constrained networks.