A novel hold-mode-based adaptive inter-piconet scheduling algorithm in bluetooth scatternets

In this paper, we proposed a new inter-piconet scheduling algorithm based on HOLD mode, a power saving mode of Bluetooth, to reduce the average delay of inter-piconet packets and maximize the utilization of bridge as possible. The delay of inter-piconet traffic is incurred by the phenomenon that a bridge stays in a piconet which has no inter-piconet traffic to be processed while inter-piconet packets of other piconets have to wait in queues. Consequently, our proposed scheme aims at determining the time duration which the bridge should spend in different piconet according to the traffic pattern so that the idle time of a bridge can be minimized. In addition, our design completely follows Bluetooth specification, i.e., there is no need to modify the specification or add any other device. So it is easy to implement and integrate the proposed scheduling algorithm into Bluetooth specification. Finally, we show the superiority of the proposed scheme on average delay, throughput, and scalability by simulation.