Designing of roaming protocol for bluetooth equipped multi agent systems

Abstract

Bluetooth is an established standard for low cost, low power, wireless personal area network. Currently, Bluetooth does not support any roaming protocol in which handoff occurs dynamically when a Bluetooth device is moving out of the piconet. If a device is losing its connection to the master device, no provision is made to transfer it to another master. Handoff is not possible in a piconet, as in order to stay within the network, a slave would have to keep the same master. So, by definition intra-handoff is not possible within a piconet. This research mainly focuses on Bluetooth technology and designing a roaming protocol for Bluetooth equipped multi agent systems. A mathematical model is derived for an agent. The idea behind the mathematical model is to know when to initiate the roaming process for an agent. A desired trajectory for the agent is calculated using its x and y coordinates system, and is simulated in SIMULINK. Various roaming techniques are also studied and discussed. The advantage of designing a roaming protocol is to ensure the Bluetooth enabled roaming devices can freely move inside the network coverage without losing its connection or break of service in case of changing the base stations. © 2009 Springer-Verlag.