New bluetooth interconnection methods: Overlaid Bluetooth Piconets (OBP) and Temporary Scatternets (TS)

In a large scale Bluetooth network, the permanent Scatternet is regarded as the only method to interconnect Piconets. But, many Bluetooth devices do not support Scatternet. When they support it, features are limited. Moreover, in high mobility situations, the permanent Scatternet is not useful because of the extremely high overhead caused by frequent disconnections and reconnections. We propose Overlaid Bluetooth Piconets (OBP) and Temporary Scatternets (TS) to interconnect Piconets and form a virtual Scatternet. In OBP, every Piconet continuously changes its stages and collects metadata from Piconets within communication range. If metadata shows the existence of useful data to transfer, an inter-piconet connection is made and data is transferred. TS can be used instead of using permanent Scatternet to interconnect Piconets when needed. TS does not require large Scatternet formations and complex maintenance schemes. Moreover, it does not keep routing information. In this paper, we introduce and illustrate the OBP and TS concepts. We then compare throughput and efficiency of OBP and TS with respect to Scatternet.