Hybrid Bluetooth Scatternet Routing

Abstract

A Bluetooth® scatternet is a Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) formed by inter-connecting piconets using cross-over nodes called bridges. In order for arbitrary nodes to be able to communicate in a scatternet they must be able to discover each other, sometimes without knowing the peer device's identity, and establish routes. Traditionally, routing in wireless ad-hoc networks is done using either a proactive, reactive, or a hybrid approach. In this paper, we present a hybrid solution with a dual meaning. We use a hybrid zone routing approach, but also perform route discovery based on either a destination address or a service. The proactive part of the protocol establishes an Extended Scatternet Neighborhood (ESN) with a complete view of adjacent, directly connected, piconets. The reactive part utilizes a route discovery mechanism and establishes inter-piconet modified source routes. The route request dissemination, for both destination and service-based route discovery, is performed using a probabilistic gossiping strategy to reduce routing load. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.