Intelligent piconet forming

摘要

The invention is mainly related to the problem of forming adhoc wireless networks and more particularly to the wireless technology Bluetooth and how a Bluetooth device may best discover masters in existing piconets and connect as a slave to those masters without having to use the master-slave switch. When a Bluetooth (BT) device moves into the neighbourhood of an existing piconet it may want to communicate with the BT units connected to that piconet by joining that piconet as a slave. Under the current Bluetooth specification the BT unit would have to rely on either "wait and hope" or "chance connection" methods of the specification. The method of the invention provides additional information about the responding BT unit's status in the existing piconet(s) which facilitates the decision as to which BT unit to connect to. A new mechanism is introduced whereby the initially inquiring and paging BT unit may become a slave unit in a newly formed piconet or in an already existing piconet. <IMAGE>