Reducing the number of hops between communication peers in a Bluetooth scatternet

Mobility, and the fact that nodes may change their communication peers in time, generates a permanently changing traffic flows in the Bluetooth scatternet. Thus, forming an optimal scatternet for a given traffic pattern may not be enough, rather a scatternet that best supports the traffic flows as they vary in time is required. In this article we propose an algorithm suite that enables us to modify the nodes´ links and roles. Periodically executing these algorithms helps in maintaining the distance (measured in hops weighted with the corresponding traffic intensity) between every source-destination pair at a minimum. This allows for a higher network throughput, lower packet delivery delay, nodes´ energy consumption, and reduced communication overhead.