Piconet vs. Scatternet

Key Differences



Comparison Chart
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Capacity
Coverage
Bandwidth

Piconet and Scatternet Definitions
Piconet
Definition of Piconet
The word piconet was derived from “Pico” which means “very small” and in regard to piconet and yes it is a small network which can connect up to only 7 devices. It is an ad-hoc computer network which is a medium through which wireless devices are linked together by the help of Bluetooth devices. Once a network is made there are devices which act as master and slave and they work with each other by coordinating different frequencies. As it has a less, small and inefficient channel bandwidth so it is also termed as PAN which means personal area network. This network covers the area of only the size of a room so it can be implemented on small devices like mobile and home appliances which need to communicate with each other. The example of its implementation can be of PS3 which is a gaming system. It’s up to us that how many wired controllers we want connect with PS3 but usually we can connect two but not anymore. Piconet allows connecting all 4 controllers at the same time by implementing the Bluetooth technology where the main console station acts as a master and the controllers as slaves.
Definition of Scatternet
The word itself is self-explanatory to a certain limit as it says “scatter” which means in various or many direction. So, scatternet is a network which at least is made by combining two or more piconets. It is also associated with the Bluetooth devices which latter act as master and slaves i.e. when a certain device in the piconet acts a s master or a slave by participating with another piconet which also acts as a master or a slave. Scatternet mainly acts a bridge among different piconets. This network (scatternet) is an amazing network which has a large, efficient and more channel bandwidth as it has the ability to serve large area networks and more than 8 devices. This type of valuable network can be used with regard to the communication in robots where they would connect to each other while one acting as a master and the other as a slave.