Editing Scatternet (section)

==Description==
A ''piconet'' is the type of connection that is formed between two or more Bluetooth-enabled devices such as modern [[cell phone]]s. Bluetooth enabled devices are "peer units" in that they are able to act as either [[master (device)|master]] or [[slave (device)|slave]]. However, when a piconet is formed between two or more devices, one device takes the role of the 'master', and all other devices assume a 'slave' role for [[synchronization]] reasons. Piconets have a 7 member address space (3 bits, with zero reserved for broadcast), which limits the maximum size of a piconet to 8 devices, i.e. 1 master and 7 slaves.

A ''scatternet'' is a number of interconnected piconets that supports communication between more than 8 devices. Scatternets can be formed when a member of one piconet (either the master or one of the slaves) elects to participate as a slave in a second, separate piconet. The device participating in both piconets can relay data between members of both ad hoc networks. However, the basic Bluetooth protocol does not support this relaying - the host software of each device would need to manage it. Using this approach, it is possible to join together numerous piconets into a large scatternet, and to expand the physical size of the network beyond Bluetooth's limited range.

Currently there are very few actual implementations of scatternets due to limitations of Bluetooth and the [[MAC address]] protocol. However, there is a growing body of research being conducted with the goal of developing algorithms to efficiently form scatternets.