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.