Optimizing neighbor discovery for ad hoc networks based on the Bluetooth PAN profile

IP layer neighbor discovery mechanisms rely highly on broadcast/multicast capabilities of the underlying link layer. The Bluetooth personal area network (PAN) profile has no native link layer broadcast/multicast capabilities and can only emulate this by repeatedly unicast link layer frames. This paper introduces a neighbor discovery mechanism that utilizes the resources in the Bluetooth PAN profile more efficient. The performance of the new mechanism is investigated using a IPv6 network simulator and compared with emulated broadcasting. It is shown that the signaling overhead can be significantly reduced at the cost of a slight increase of processing complexity at the Bluetooth master device.