User Guide

9
of 11
Bluetooth Beginner
,
s Guide
Scatternet
A group of piconets may be located in the
same area. Such overlapping piconets, each
identified by a different channel, are called a
scatternet. A device may participate in several
piconets, but can only be active in one piconet
at a time. An example of a scatternet: Imagine
that you have a piconet consisting of your PC
and a phone. The person in the office next to
yours has a piconet consisting of a phone, a
headset, and a business card scanner.
Because the two piconets are so close, they
overlap. Now, you may want to set up your
neighbor’s business card scanner to also
transmit the information that is scanned to your
PC so that you will have access to his business
contacts information. This example is illustrated
below.
PC
(master)
Phone
(slave)
One master, up to 255 slaves
As already mentioned, in a piconet there can
only be one master. Furthermore, up to seven
slaves can be active. However, there can be
additional slaves which are not active but
remain synchronized to the piconet. Such
slaves are referred to as parked. A parked
device can very quickly become active and
begin communicating in the piconet. By
swapping active and parked slaves, you can
increase the number of slaves virtually
connected to the piconet from seven to 255
devices.
Card scanner
(slave)
Phone
(master)
Headset
(slave)