4th International IEEE Conference on Broadband Communications, Networks, Systems

Research Article

Practical Time Synchronization for Bluetooth Scatternets

  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1109/BROADNETS.2007.4550453,
        author={Matthias Ringwald and Kay R\o{}mer},
        title={Practical Time Synchronization for Bluetooth Scatternets},
        proceedings={4th International IEEE Conference on Broadband Communications, Networks, Systems},
        publisher={IEEE},
        proceedings_a={BROADNETS},
        year={2010},
        month={5},
        keywords={},
        doi={10.1109/BROADNETS.2007.4550453}
    }
    
  • Matthias Ringwald
    Kay Römer
    Year: 2010
    Practical Time Synchronization for Bluetooth Scatternets
    BROADNETS
    IEEE
    DOI: 10.1109/BROADNETS.2007.4550453
Matthias Ringwald1,*, Kay Römer1,*
  • 1: Institute for Pervasive Computing, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
*Contact email: mringwal@inf.ethz.ch, roemer@inf.ethz.ch

Abstract

By means of so-called Scatternets, Bluetooth provides the ability to construct robust wireless multi-hop networks. In this paper we propose a practical protocol for time synchronization of such Bluetooth multi-hop networks. Our protocol makes use of the internal clock maintained by Bluetooth, requires minimal communication overhead, and provides an accuracy of few milliseconds across multiple hops. The protocol has been implemented and evaluated on BTnodes, an embedded computing platform which uses Bluetooth for ad hoc networking.