The vision of ad-hoc networking with Bluetooth includes the concept of devices participating in multiple "piconets" and thereby forming a "scatternet". However, the details of scatternet support for Bluetooth are not specified yet. This paper presents a scheme for Bluetooth scatternet operation that adapts to varying traffic patterns. Being based on sniff mode, it does not require substantial modification of the current Bluetooth specification and may thus be incorporated into currently available Bluetooth products. We present simulation results that confirm the applicability of our approach to realistic scenarios.

Future applications of Bluetooth are likely to include ad-hoc networking. Therefore, it is desirable to interconnect multiple Bluetooth piconets to form a scatternet. Up to now, there is no extensive proposal for scatternet support available. We present and analyze an adaptive scheme for scatternet scheduling that is based on the sniff mode and thus does not require substantial modification of the current Bluetooth specification. The suitability of our approach is shown by first simulation results.