Rendezvous layer protocols for Bluetooth-enabled smart devices-

Communication platforms for ubiquitous computing need to

be flexible, self-organizing, highly scalable and energy efficient, because in

the envisioned scenarios a large number of autonomous entities communicate

in potentially unpredictable ways. Short-range wireless technologies

form the basis of such communication platforms. In this paper we investigate

device discovery in Bluetooth, a candidate wireless technology for

ubiquitous computing. Detecting new devices accounts for a significant

portion of the total energy consumption in Bluetooth. It is argued that

the standard Bluetooth rendezvous protocols for device detection are not

well suited for ubiquitous computing scenarios, because they do not scale

to a large number of devices, take too long to complete, and consume too

much energy. Based on theoretical considerations, practical experiments

and simulation results, recommendations for choosing inquiry parameters

are given that optimize discovery performance. We prop