Improved Performance of Bluetooth with Focus on Ad-Hoc Applications

Abstract: The number of devices making use of Bluetooth cable-replacement technology has rapidly increased in numbers thanks to the amount of implementations in cellular telephones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), etc. Instead of the point-to-point technique used today the wireless community demands more sophisticated solutions to transmit information between two devices, e.g. using a chat program within an ad-hoc network. However, Bluetooth provides neither a routing protocol, nor is the slave/slave bridge, which is an important enabler for point-to-multipoint communication in so-called scatternets, implemented in hardware. Another issue relates to the time-to-connect which determines the usability of Bluetooth in scenarios where the units move around. In order to build research on these topics on trustworthy ground, we first address the validation of a Bluetooth simulation model, implementing the Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) technique of Bluetooth version 1.1 in a correct way. A potential source of problems in reference simulation models has been identified and corrections are described. Next, an improvement is presented for the pseudo random hop sequence regarding the distribution of frequencies used in the Adapted Channel Hopping (ACH) scheme for Bluetooth version 1.2. Further, the impact of the random backoff boundary, which determines the duration of the inquiry procedure and thus of the time-to-connect, is studied by simulation. Obviously, the settings of this parameter contained in the specification leads to suboptimal behaviour. In this thesis, a lower random backoff boundary parameter is suggested, which yields much faster time-to-connect. Finally, the Modified Reverse Path Forwarding (MRPF) routing algorithm for Bluetooth is proposed. This algorithm reduces the amount of connections needed to transmit Asynchronous Connection Less (ACL) data packets as compared to the standard RPF, at the cost of additional overhead. Altogether, especially with the proposed improvements of Bluetooth performance, this technology can be considered to be well suited for nomadic scenarios.