An Energy-Aware Multi-Hop Tree Scatternet for Bluetooth Networks

Bluetooth is an enabling technology used to construct personal area networks. Since Bluetooth devices are usually energy-constrained, a critical issue for Bluetooth networks (or scatternets) is to achieve energy-efficiency to extend their lifetime. We address this problem by distributedly forming an energy-aware scatternet in the multi-hop scenario, and further design a local reorganization technique that maintains scatternets' energy-efficient features to extend scatternet lifetime. The proposed scatternet formation technique balances devices' energy consumption by assigning roles to devices that suit their workload and energy resources, and efficiently form the scatternets with short links and small network diameter to reduce energy consumption. The generated scatternets are also designed for a small number of piconets to improve performance in typical Bluetooth applications. The localized, and hence lightweight, reorganization can extend scatternet lifetime further. Experimental results, obtained from implementations using the Blueware simulator, confirm that the generated scatternets have a significantly longer lifetime than others.