Middleware Solutions for Self-organizing Multi-hop Multi-path Internet Connectivity Based on Bluetooth

The availability of heterogeneous wireless interfaces and of growing computing resources on widespread portable devices pushes for enabling innovative deployment scenarios where mobile nodes dynamically self-organize to offer Internet connectivity to their peers via dynamically established multi-hop multi-path opportunities. We claim the suitability of novel, mobility-aware, and application-layer middleware based on lightweight evaluation indicators to support the complexity of that scenario, involving heterogeneous wireless technologies over differentiated and statically unpredictable execution environments. To validate these claims, we have implemented an innovative middleware that manages the durability/throughput-aware formation and selection of different multi-hop paths simultaneously. This paper specifically focuses on how our middleware effectively exploits Bluetooth for multi-hop multi-path networking, by pointing out the crucial role of i) compliance with standard solutions to favor rapid deployment over off-the-shelf equipment and ii) the reduction of the usual overhead associated with some expensive Bluetooth operations, e.g., device inquiry. In particular, the paper shows how it is possible, on the one hand, to extend JSR-82 to portably access monitoring indicators for lightweight mobility/throughput estimations and, on the other hand, to reduce the time needed to update the set of available Bluetooth-based connectivity opportunities via approximated and lightweight forms of discovery.