Question

Discuss the role(s) of scatternet in 5G technologies (consider redundancies

Answer 1

A scatternet is a type of ad hoc computer network consisting of two or more piconets. The terms "scatternet" and "piconet" are typically applied to Bluetooth wireless technology.

SCATTERNET:

Eight devices can be considered in a Bluetooth network called Piconet. One of them acts as a master and other acts a slaves.

A scatter-net is formed when two or more piconets connect through a bridge node.

In addition to seven active slaves, there can be up to 255 parked nodes in the net that can only respond to a beacon signal from the master.

The slaves are dumb devices that do the task that the master tells them to do.

All the communication is between the master and slave and not between the slaves.

Currently there are very few actual implementations of scatternets due to limitations of Bluetooth and the MAC address protocol. However, there is a growing body of research being conducted with the goal of developing algorithms to efficiently form scatternets.

Scatternets have the potential to bring the interconnectivity of the Internet to the physical world through wireless devices. A number of companies have attempted to launch social networking and dating services that leverage early scatternet implementations (see Bluedating). Scatternets can also be used to enable ad hoc communication and interaction between autonomous robots and other devices.

Slot timing in a scatternet.

Obviously, scatternets are not the most efficient way to use Bluetooth bandwidth. The problem arises because the piconets that make up scatternets aren't synchronized. The first solution that comes to mind is just make all the piconets in an area synchronized with one another. The problem with that is that masters transmit in even slots and slaves transmit in odd slots. Thus, timing that worked for a device that is the master on one piconet and a slave on another would be wrong for a device that was a slave on two piconets. Besides, Bluetooth piconets can form and dissolve in a few seconds, so trying to decide which piconet should set the overall timing when piconets are constantly forming and dissolving would be nearly impossible!

Sometimes it doesn't matter whether a few slots are wasted moving between the different piconets that make up a scatternet. If data rates are low, a few slots lost now and then aren't at all important. When it is important, then the solution is simply to avoid using scatternets by uniting devices into one piconet. For example, LAN access points need to share their bandwidth among many slaves, so they want to be as efficient as possible. To maintain maximum efficiency, they keep all devices connected to them in just one piconet.