Ble scatternet system and method

A method of operating a BLE (Bluetooth low energy) network, the method comprising:

• providing a first piconet including a first master/scanner and a first group of slave/advertisers for transmitting wireless advertisements and for establishing wireless connections, respectively, with the first master/scanner;
• wherein each slave/advertiser in the first group can only establish a wireless connection with the first master/scanner;
• operating a first slave/advertiser of the first group to transmit an initial advertisement;
• operating the first master/scanner in a scanning mode to detect the initial advertisement and to transmit a corresponding connection request in response to the detecting to the first slave/advertiser;
• operating the first slave/advertiser to receive and accept the corresponding connection request and establish an association with the first master/scanner;
• operating the first master/scanner to transmit to the first slave/advertiser a schedule for subsequent advertisements to synchronize the first master/scanner with the first slave/advertiser, and causing the first slave/advertiser to go to sleep;
• operating the first slave/advertiser to wake up and transmit subsequent advertisements according to the schedule, and operating the first master/scanner to simultaneously scan for the subsequent advertisements according to the schedule and transmit connection requests corresponding to the subsequent advertisements, and operating the first slave/advertiser to accept corresponding connection requests from the first master/scanner when the first slave/advertiser has data available to be advertised;
• operating the first slave/advertiser to advertise the available data to the first master/scanner, and operating the first master/scanner to aggregate the advertised available data;
• providing a second piconet including a second master/scanner and a second group of low-power slave/advertisers for transmitting wireless advertisements and establishing wireless connections, respectively, with the second master/scanner;
• operating the second master/scanner in wireless scanning to detect an advertisement transmitted by a second slave/advertiser of the second group and transmitting a connection request in response to the detecting, and transmitting a schedule for subsequent advertisements after an initial advertisement by the second slave/advertiser;
• operating the second slave/advertiser for transmitting the initial advertisement, receiving and accepting a resulting connection request, establishing an association with the second master/scanner, and then causing the second slave/advertiser to go to sleep in a low-power mode, waking up and transmitting subsequent advertisements only according to the schedule, and accepting resulting connection requests from the second master/scanner when data is available to be advertised, transmitting the available data to the first master/scanner, and causing the second slave/advertiser to go back to sleep;
• and
• operating the second master/scanner to transmit an advertisement containing aggregated data received from the first slave/advertiser to a third master/scanner.