Bluetooth Scatternet Formation and Internetworking with 802.11 and Gprs

Mobile Ad-Hoc networks(MANET) using Bluetooth technology has gained immense popularity among the networking community. Nowadays electronic devices like cell phones come equipped with Bluetooth. Whereas Bluetooth technology has certain obvious advantages like low power consumption and reliable connection but it suffers some inherent problems including low area of operation, limit of 7 slave devices per master device. 802.11 technology on the other hand, has a wider area of operation and therefore very useful as Access points and higher bandwidth in the order of 11 Mbps in 802.11b. But 802.11 has a higher power consumption than Bluetooth. Cellular networks have a much wider coverage in geographical area than 802.11. Complementing Bluetooth with 802.11 and cellular network technology like GPRS would solve the shortcomings of these three technologies. This thesis is composed of four projects. It introduces RCBTEE(A Remotely Controlled Bluetooth Enabled Environment) which presents a simple Bluetooth Scatternet formation algorithm with remote control applications and a single access point connected to a content server. Then EquiBlue is presented. EquiBlue is a load balanced Bluetooth Scatternet formation algorithm. Then BlueFi is introduced. BlueFi presents a conceptual software layer in the protocol stacks of Bluetooth and 802.11 to realize interoperability in devices with both Bluetooth and 802.11 interfaces. At the end, BlueMobile, a novel protocol for handoff’s in Bluetooth, 802.11 and GPRS networks is presented. A thorough analysis of all the four projects is done and detailed simulation results are provided. The results underscore the importance of achieving convergence in Bluetooth networks with other networks like 802.11 and GPRS.