JUMP mode---a dynamic window-based scheduling framework for Bluetooth scatternets

• Authors: Niklas Johansson;Fredrik Alriksson;Ulf Jönsson
• Venue: MobiHoc '01 Proceedings of the 2nd ACM international symposium on Mobile ad hoc networking & computing
• Year: 2001

The emerging Bluetooth technology enables devices to be wirelessly connected in an ad hoc fashion. Using Bluetooth, devices are organized into small piconets, which in turn may be inter-connected to form larger networks called scatternets. In a scatternet, some of the devices participate in more than one piconet. These nodes are called PMP (Participant in Multiple Piconets) nodes. Since a Bluetooth unit only hence one transceiver, it may only be active in one piconet at any given instant and hance a PMP node must schedule its time between piconets on a time-division basis. The availability of PMP nodes represents an important performance constraint when building scatternets and has to be effectively coordinated between the different piconets. To allow flexible and efficient scatternet operation and to overcome the shortcomings of the current Bludetooth modes, we proposed a new mode---JUMP mode. This mode includes a set of communication rules that enable efficient scatternet operation by offering a great deal of flexibility for a node to adapt its activity in different piconets to the traffic conditions. Using JUMP mode a PMP node divides the time into timewindows and then signals about which piconet to be present in for each of these time windows. The time windows are of pseudo random length to eliminate systematic collisions and thereby avoid starvation and live-lock problems without any need for scatternet-wide may coordination. Besides enabling scatternet operation, JUMP mode also enhance other aspects of Bluetooth , such as low-power operation