QoS aware Interpiconet Scheduling in Bluetooth Scatternet (QIPS)

Abstract

In Bluetooth, the operation of a scatternet requires some Bluetooth units to be interpiconet units (bridge or gateway nodes), which need to switch their presence among piconets This requires an interpiconet scheduling algorithm that can schedule the presence of these bridge nodes in an efficient manner. This paper presents and evaluates a novel scheme called "QoS aware Inter Piconet Scheduling in Scatternet (QIPS) " tailored for interpiconet scheduling in small-scale scatternets and use hold mode. In QIPS, to provide the QoS, we divide the incoming traffic i-e best effort, audio and video data in to eight traffic classes on the basis of their QoS (delay and bandwidth) requirements. According to their QoS requirements different priorities are assigned to these traffic classes and phenomenon of packet forwarding and switching of the bridge node are dictated by these priorities. Using that QIPS provides an integrated solution for both intra and interpiconet scheduling, i.e., for polling of slaves and scheduling of bridge. It supports both delay and bandwidth guarantees according to the QoS requirement of the traffic classes and also aims to remain fair and efficient with asymmetric flow rates and also QIPs use low-power hold mode, which allows greater flexibility than other low- power modes. We have evaluated the performance of proposed algorithm by comparing with LLA [8] and EFSA [9] regarding efficient and fair inter-piconet scheduling via simulation.