A survey on Bluetooth multi-hop networks

Bluetooth was firstly announced in 1998. Originally designed as cable replacement connecting devices in a point-to-point fashion its high penetration arouses interest in its ad-hoc networking potential. This ad-hoc networking potential of Bluetooth is advertised for years - but until recently no actual products were available and less than a handful of real Bluetooth multi-hop network deployments were reported. The turnaround was triggered by the release of the Bluetooth Low Energy Mesh Profile which is unquestionable a great achievement but not well suited for all use cases of multi-hop networks. This paper surveys the tremendous work done on Bluetooth multi-hop networks during the last 20 years. All aspects are discussed with demands for a real world Bluetooth multi-hop operation in mind. Relationships and side effects of different topics for a real world implementation are explained. This unique focus distinguishes this survey from existing ones. Furthermore, to the best of the authors’ knowledge this is the first survey consolidating the work on Bluetooth multi-hop networks for classic Bluetooth technology as well as for Bluetooth Low Energy. Another individual characteristic of this survey is a synopsis of real world Bluetooth multi-hop network deployment efforts. In fact, there are only four reports of a successful establishment of a Bluetooth multi-hop network with more than 30 nodes and only one of them was integrated in a real world application - namely a photovoltaic power plant. © 2019 The Author

MAC Protocols Used by Wireless Sensor Networks and a General Method of Performance Evaluation

Many researchers employ IEEE802.15.4 as communication technology for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). However, medium access control (MAC) layer requirements for communications in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) vary because the network is usually optimized for specific applications. Thus, one particular standard will hardly be suitable for every possible application. Two general categories of MAC techniques exist: contention based and schedule based. This paper explains these two main approaches and includes examples of each one. The paper concludes with a unique performance analysis and comparison of benefits and limitations of each protocol with respect to WSNs

A PROTOCOL SUITE FOR WIRELESS PERSONAL AREA NETWORKS

A Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) is an ad hoc network that consists of devices that surround an individual or an object. Bluetooth® technology is especially suitable for formation of WPANs due to the pervasiveness of devices with Bluetooth® chipsets, its operation in the unlicensed Industrial, Scientific, Medical (ISM) frequency band, and its interference resilience. Bluetooth® technology has great potential to become the de facto standard for communication between heterogeneous devices in WPANs. The piconet, which is the basic Bluetooth® networking unit, utilizes a Master/Slave (MS) configuration that permits only a single master and up to seven active slave devices. This structure limitation prevents Bluetooth® devices from directly participating in larger Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) and Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs). In order to build larger Bluetooth® topologies, called scatternets, individual piconets must be interconnected. Since each piconet has a unique frequency hopping sequence, piconet interconnections are done by allowing some nodes, called bridges, to participate in more than one piconet. These bridge nodes divide their time between piconets by switching between Frequency Hopping (FH) channels and synchronizing to the piconet\u27s master. In this dissertation we address scatternet formation, routing, and security to make Bluetooth® scatternet communication feasible. We define criteria for efficient scatternet topologies, describe characteristics of different scatternet topology models as well as compare and contrast their properties, classify existing scatternet formation approaches based on the aforementioned models, and propose a distributed scatternet formation algorithm that efficiently forms a scatternet topology and is resilient to node failures. We propose a hybrid routing algorithm, using a bridge link agnostic approach, that provides on-demand discovery of destination devices by their address or by the services that devices provide to their peers, by extending the Service Discovery Protocol (SDP) to scatternets. We also propose a link level security scheme that provides secure communication between adjacent piconet masters, within what we call an Extended Scatternet Neighborhood (ESN)

Enhancing Plug and Play Capabilities in Body Area Network Protocols

This project aimed to create a plug-and-play protocol for Body Area Networks (BANs). This protocol enables communication between a diverse number of devices and a base station, regardless of equipment manufacturer. Previous BANs rely on proprietary software, or protocols that are specialized to the physical device. Our protocol takes a more universal approach, allowing any device to participate in a BAN without introducing any significant overhead or running cost to the operation of that BAN. Unlike previous approaches, any existing motes and the base station will not have to be updated. Only new devices being added to the BAN will have to implement the protocol before connecting. Our protocol introduces overhead that reduced the performance and lifetime of the motes used in our BAN

Device Discovery in Frequency Hopping Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

This research develops a method for efficient discovery of wireless devices for a frequency hopping spread spectrum, synchronous, ad hoc network comprised of clustered sub-networks. The Bluetooth wireless protocol serves as the reference protocol. The development of a discovery, or outreach, method for scatternets requires the characterization of performance metrics of Bluetooth piconets, many of which are unavailable in literature. Precise analytical models characterizing the interference caused to Bluetooth network traffic by inquiring devices, the probability mass function of packet error rates between arbitrary pairs of Bluetooth networks, and Bluetooth discovery time distribution are developed. Based on the characterized performance metrics, three scatternet outreach methods are developed and compared. Outreach methods which actively inquire on a regular basis, as proposed in literature, are shown to produce lower goodput, have greater mean packet delay, require more power, and cause significant delays in discovery. By passively remaining available for outreach, each of these disadvantages is avoided

A New BlueRing Scatternet Topology for Bluetooth with Its Formation, Routing, and Maintenance Protocols

The basic networking unit in Bluetooth is piconet, and a larger-area Bluetooth network can be formed by multiple piconets, called scatternet. However, the structure of scatternets is not defined in the Bluetooth specification and remains as an open issue at the designers' choice. It is desirable to have simple yet ecient scatternet topologies with well supports of routing protocols, considering that Bluetooths are to be used for personal-area networks with design goals of simplicity and compactness. In the literature, although many routing protocols have been proposed for mobile ad hoc networks, directly applying them poses a problem due to Bluetooth's special baseband and MAC-layer features. In this work, we propose an attractive scatternet topology called BlueRing which connects piconets as a ring interleaved by bridges between piconets, and address its formation, routing, and topology maintenance protocols. The BlueRing architecture enjoys the following nice features. First, routing on BlueRing is stateless in the sense that no routing information needs to be kept by any host once the ring is formed. This ould be favourable..