Bluetooth Scatternet Formation Performance: Simulations vs. Testbeds

Bluepleiades is a Bluetooth scatternet formation protocol which has been proven to perform well both analytically and by simulations. In this paper we present the implementation of Bluepleiades on two distinct platforms: the DBT-120 and the BTnodes. Our testbed shows that Bluepleiades can be implemented in practice but exhibits decreased performance in terms of capability of discovering neighbors and setting up links over time. This is due to the fact that the Bluetooth hardware we used, does not fully support some critical non mandatory features of the Bluetooth specifications which could instead be exploited to significantly improve the overall performance. This experimental study provides important insights on the importance of a full implementation of the Bluetooth specification to improve scatternet formation efficiency in real systems