An On-Demand Bluetooth Scatternet Formation and Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Bluetooth is a promising short-range wireless communication technology with the characteristics of interference resilience and power efficiency which are required by wireless sensor networks. As an enhanced sensor node platform, the Intel Mote uses Bluetoth as its radio scheme and MAC protocol. However, most of the existing scatternet formation protocols intend to connect all the nodes within the networks regardless of traffic pattern. For wireless sensor network applications with traffic of low duty cycle, on-demand scatternet formation and routing achieve significant power saving by avoiding to maintain the entire network connectivity. We propose in this paper an on-demand scatternet and route formation protocol for Bluetooth-based wireless sensor networks. It is able to cope with multiple sources initiating traffic simultaneously in densely deployed wireless sensor networks. We also introduce a modified Inquiry scheme using extended ID packet for power efficient propagation of route request messages. Furthermore, we propose a mechanism employing POLL packets in Page processes to transfer scatternet formation and route reply information without extra overhead. Simulation results show that our on-demand scatternet formation and routing protocol can provide multihop channels with reasonable delay for Bluetooth-base wireless sensor networks.