An architectural framework to deploy scatternet-based applications over Bluetooth

Abstract

Bluetooth is a promising wireless personal area network technology and is on the verge of being ubiquitously deployed over a wide range of devices. The basic unit of a Bluetooth network is a centralized master-slave topology, namely a piconet, that can be easily extended into a multi-hop ad hoc network called a scatternet. Scatternets increase Bluetooth's usability multi-folds such that numerous applications may be built over them to unleash the potential of Bluetooth. The main ingredients of a scatternet-based application include a topology formation and routing algorithm, which themselves are of many types. A standard architectural framework shall prove extremely useful to integrate all these applications and algorithms in a seamless, modular and re-usable fashion, hence saving one from re-inventing the wheel most of the time. In this paper, we present one such novel architectural framework that constitutes a highly portable and plug-n-play modules to deploy scatternet-based applications over Bluetooth. These constituent modules may be developed independently and be easily integrated at run-time. The algorithm modules may be built in an application-oriented fashion to deliver better performance to particular type of applications that may have specific requirements and constraints. To the best of our knowledge, this is a first attempt to propose a standard architecture to deploy applications over Bluetooth. We provide details of our proposed set of APIs and describe a multimedia application that we have built in complete accordance with our architecture.