Mobility support for Bluetooth public access

Bluetooth technology offers the potential for low-cost, broadband wireless access for a range of mobile and portable devices. It can thus provide for ubiquitous computing across a wide range of devices. In this paper we explore the avenues for providing mobility in a Bluetooth access network. The existing methods for the same are briefly summarized and their shortcomings are pointed out. We then present a new protocol for enabling fast handoff for mobility and study its performance in terms of handoff delay and useful data bandwidth. The protocol is designed to work with standard Bluetooth hardware such that the system design is modular. It exploits the special Bluetooth link layer features to achieve significant improvement in the handoff delay and bandwidth performance.