Asynchronous Formation of Non-hierarchical Bluetooth Scatternets

A Bluetooth ad-hoc network consists of Bluetooth devices interconnected into piconets and piconets interconnected into scatternets. The specification has not yet addressed the issue of algorithms for scatternet formation. Some algorithms have been proposed, but they are either synchronous, they work only with strongly connected topologies, or they are master-slave based and hierarchical of nature. Instead, we propose two alternative algorithms one slave-slave-based and one master-slave based as a new non-hierarchical approach to asynchronous scatternet formation on weakly underlying topologies. Simulations demonstrate that the nonhierarchical asynchronous algorithms form scatternet structures that are more efficient than those formed by existing hierarchical proposals. Furthermore, the slaveslave-based algorithm forms scatternet structures that are considerably more efficient than structures based on master-slave bridges.