Proposed Bluetooth Middleware Profile for On-location Universal Format Announcement Mahmoud Al-hawabkeh, Rosli alleh, Iqbal H. Jebril Faculty of computer cience and Information Technology University of Malaya Abstract Bluetooth specification comprises not only communication protocols but application as well. The specifications for building interoperable applications are called profiles. This paper presents a proposed Bluetooth profile which enables Bluetooth mobile users to view and interact with onlocation announcements using wireless Bluetooth connection with another Bluetooth enabled mobile device over ad hoc scatternet. The new proposed Announcement profile is based on transmitting a universal format announcement from on-location Bluetooth server to Bluetooth client device. Base on the proposed project users with Bluetooth enabled device can on the move connects to another Bluetooth enabled device (server contains the local announcements), then within seconds all the user needed announcement will be retrieved to his device. (only the announcement with user interest will be retrieved). The method we propos is similar to subscribing to a Usenet newsgroup then the newsreader only will retrieve the news articles of only subscribed newsgroups. Keywords: Bluetooth, Wireless PAN, Ad hoc Networks, catternet. 1. Introduction The Bluetooth wireless technology is designed as a solution for personal, portable, and handheld electronic devices. Using low-cost, user friendly, high speed radio link, Bluetooth wireless technology eliminates the need for cables for connecting the mobile device to another handheld devices, accessories and laptops. It provides secure short-range communication without cables and without line of sight between the devices. Bluetooth as a wireless connectivity technology allows personal devices to communicate with each other directly without the need for an established WAN or LAN infrastructure-based services. Bluetooth wireless technology can be use to connect almost any device to another device. The traditional example is to link a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) or a laptop to a mobile phone. That s why we can easily take remote connections with our PDA or laptop without getting our mobile phone from our pocket or messing around with cables. Bluetooth can also be use to form ad hoc networks of several devices (figure 1). This can be useful for example in a meeting, where all participants have their own Bluetooth-compatible laptops, and want to share files with each other. [1]. Currently, advertising on_location announcement can be done by using traditional methods like using newspaper, banner board, and internet web pages. On the move, mostly all users does not carry newspapers or able to brows the internet. They just carry their handheld limit capability device traveling to location seeking service they need. On the move users seeks lots of on_location service announcement, This service could be taken dinner at restaurant, buying a book, watching movie, locating nearest gas station, nearest ATM bank machine, nearest Masjed or urau,
nearest local food restaurant, nearest 5 star hotel, etc. Presently, methods for advertising on_location service are confusing and unhelpful. ome times the user spends hours to can locate hotel or gas station. And with the exponential growth of the mobile technology, this field of research needs to be open up. Therefore, this paper intends to propose a new Bluetooth profile that can retrieve on-location announcements / advertisements / service. In real live there are two types of announcements, public and private announcements. Public announcements which are available for all people for free. Examples like on-location public holidays announcements, weather forecast, traffic jam, hospitals map, government building directions, etc. On the other hand private announcements, like restaurant menu, restaurant location, bank services, hotels, etc. Announcements could be free of charge for customers but with some cost for consumers (server database hosting). Proposed announcement database consist of hierarchy of announcement groups similar to Usenet news database (figure 4). The proposed Bluetooth profile solution for broadcasting on-location universal format announcements would bring significant time and cost saving to the consumer and customers by cutting short critical communication delays. In this paper, we present a proposed Bluetooth profile for onlocation universal format announcement. The new profile applies transferring the announcement at the Bluetooth server workstation to the Bluetooth client device, with a two-way interaction. The client device allows user to subscribe to several universal group announcements for example food.restaurant.fastfood, food.restaurant.malay, tourism.hotel.5star, tourism.hotel.4star, etc. In which the hierarchy of group announcement is similar to the Usenet newsgroups database. Then the client connects to Bluetooth server to retrieve the only subscribed groups. ince Bluetooth servers could have stored thousands of announcement groups. This paper is organized as follows. In the next section we present a brief background history of the Bluetooth wireless technology, followed by the current Bluetooth profiles, we will then present our proposed profile, and finally we concludes with summary of the paper. 2. Background history of Bluetooth wireless technology Bluetooth is the new emerging technology for wireless communication. It was developed by a group called Bluetooth pecial Interest Group (IG), formed in May 1998. The founding members were Ericsson, Nokia, Intel, IBM and Toshiba. ince then, almost all of the biggest companies in the telecommunications business (e.g. 3Com, Microsoft, Motorola) have joined the Bluetooth IG and the number of the participating companies is now over 1,500. The version 1.0 of the Bluetooth specification was approved in the summer of 1999, and the latest version 1.2 in March 2004 [2] (at the time of writing). Due to the release of the specification, Bluetooth is now available in a wide variety of products and it is believed that Bluetooth is one of the major technologies for short-range wireless networks and wireless PAN. Bluetooth provides an enabling technology for multi-hop ad hoc networks. It is a promising technology upon which to base the construction of inexpensive and large ad hoc networks, especially when the low cost of Bluetooth chips (about $5 chip) is taken into account [3] [4][5]. This is true for power system substation applications where installing fiber is prohibitively expensive. A Bluetooth node operates in the unlicensed Industrial-cience- Medical (IM) band at 2.45 GHz and adopts frequency-hop transceivers to combat interference and fading. The nominal radio range of Bluetooth is 10
meters and can be extended up to 100 meter with an amplified transmit power. The name Bluetooth comes from the Danish king Harald Blatand (Bluetooth). King Bluetooth is credited with uniting the candinavian people during 10th century. imilarly, the Bluetooth wireless technology aims to unit personal computing devices [6]. The Bluetooth IG considers three application scenarios. The first is wire replacement, to connect a PC or laptop to its peripherals. The second is the ad hoc networking of several different users at short range in a small area, forming a piconet. The third is to use Bluetooth as an access point to widearea voice and data services provided by a wired network or cellular system [7]. We can not expect to use Bluetooth for applications that typically demand greater distances, much higher bandwidth need to support a large volume of simultaneous, active network nodes. For instance, we should expects or even desire Bluetooth to provide support for such applications as high quality realtime wireless video with high bandwidth nor would we anticipate Bluetooth to support wireless networks with highvolume network and greater distances. On the other hand, we would expect to see Bluetooth in any number of devices that are smaller, lower-powered, and that do not exceed the bandwidth provided. ome of this application would include portable entertainment devices, kitchen appliances, remote controls, home automation and security products, etc. [9] Bluetooth can be used for infrastructureless mobile networks, commonly known as an ad hoc network. Ad hoc network have no fixed routers, and all nodes are capable of movement and can be connected dynamically in an arbitrary manner. Nodes of these networks function as routers which discover and maintain routes to other nodes in the network [8]. Piconet B M: Master : lave M/s: Gateway Piconet A Piconet C M M M/ Figure 1. Bluetooth catternet 2.1 Piconet and scatternet When two devices are connected one of them acts as a master and the other one as a slave. According to Bluetooth specification the device can perform both roles, as master and as a slave. A Bluetooth device can discover other devices within range of 10 meters using an inquiry process. The Bluetooth device that sent out inquiry message will automatically become a master and the responding device will become a slave. The roles between two devices can be switched at any time, for example a master can become a slave and viceversa. Master can have up to seven slaves to form a piconet (figure 1). A piconet consists of only one master and up to seven slaves. All communication within a piconet goes through the master device. Every piconet has a unique piconet ID, which is same as the piconet s master s Bluetooth address which is the device address given by the manufacturer. The master of a piconet also maintains a table of all the devices with its piconet. Piconets may be static or formed dynamically as devices move in and out of range of one another. A scatternet consists of one or more piconets connected by gateway nodes. Two piconets are called neighbor, if they share a gateway node. Each Bluetooth device can be a slave for more
than one piconet and can be a master for another piconet at the same time. In a scatternet, two slaves in different piconets not allowed to communicate with each other directly. The two slaves, however, can communicate with each other directly by forming a piconet with the two nodes in which one becomes a master of the piconet. Likewise, masters cannot directly communicate with each other but connection has to be done through a gateway node. Therefore, a gateway node has to schedule its communication with all its masters. Figure 2. Bluetooth Protocol tack 2.2 Bluetooth Protocol tack The Bluetooth protocol stack consists of a set of related protocols, each of which performs one of the tasks required to accomplish the communications between the two devices. The various protocols within the Bluetooth protocol stack work together to ensure that data is transmitted reliably from one Bluetooth device to another Bluetooth device. The Bluetooth protocol stack is shown in figure 2. The radio layer defines the technical characteristics of the Bluetooth radios. A Bluetooth radio operates on the licensefree 2.4 GHz IM band. The Bluetooth baseband provides transmission channels for both data and voice, and is capable of supporting one asynchronous data link and up to three synchronous voice links. Link Management Protocol (LMP), which uses the underlying baseband services. Host Control Interface (HCI) is used to isolate the Bluetooth baseband and link manager from a transport protocol such as UB or R-232. This allows a standard host processor interface to Bluetooth hardware. An HCI driver on the host is used to interface a Bluetooth application with the transport protocol. Using HCI, a Bluetooth application can access Bluetooth hardware without knowledge of the transport layer or other hardware implementation details. The remaining Bluetooth protocols are implemented in software. Logical Link Control and Adaptation Protocol (L2CAP), the lowest layer, provides the interface to the link controller and allows for interoperability between Bluetooth devices. everal Bluetooth protocols interface to the L2CAP link layer. ervice Discovery Protocol (DP) provides service discovery specific to the Bluetooth environment without inhibiting the use of other service discovery protocols. Radio frequency Comments (RFCOMM) is a simple transport protocol providing serial data transfer. Telephony Control Protocol pecification (TC) is provided for voice and data call control. Bluetooth also supports IrDA Object Exchange Protocol (IrOBEX), a session protocol defined by IrDA. This protocol may run over other transport layers, including RFCOMM and TCP/IP. For Bluetooth devices, only connection oriented OBEX is supported. Three application profiles have been developed using OBEX. These include synchronization functionality for phone books, calendars, messaging, and so on; file transfer functionality; and object push for business card support. Finally, Bluetooth may be used as a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) bearer. The specification outlines the interoperability requirements for implementing this capability [9]. 3. Current Bluetooth Profiles Bluetooth has defined profiles in the specification to be used by devices that are either similar in nature or are
likely to interact one with another. Each profile contains details on how to use the Bluetooth protocol stack in specifying and setting up parameters in the base standard for truly interoperable communication among devices [3]. This allows for quicker setup and interoperable communication without the need for a more elaborate get to know you phase of an initial connection. For example, a Bluetooth equipped PDA using the LAN Access profile in an automobile is probably a like scenario [10]. Beside laptop with Bluetooth wireless data connections, PDA s (Personal Digital Assistant) such as Palm O handhelds and multimedia phones like ony Ericsson P900 and Nokia 6600 (Figure 3), are becoming increasingly popular as portable communication devices. However, major restrictions of Bluetooth specification is it supports variety of profiles which none of them concern on-location application user needs. For example, among the related profiles the Generic Access profile related to discovery, link establishment, and security levels between two Bluetooth devices. While Generic Object Exchange (OBEX) profile defines procedures used by applications performing object exchange. It defines these processes for transaction such as file transfers, object pushes and pulls, and synchronization. Other profiles like basic imaging, basic printing, cordless telephony, dialup networking, file transfer, hand-free, hardcopy replacement, headset, human interface device, intercom, LAN access, object push, personal area network, serial port, service discovery, and synchronization [11], non on them concerns on-location announcement service. Figure 3. Bluetooth Multimedia Phone
private public hotel 5star Booktore Food hopping Bank... Location... Weatherforecast 4star Promotion Entertainment Hospital Malay International Fastfood PC Computer Internet port Cinema Polis Melaka KL eafood Figure 4. Hierarchy of announcement groups 4. Discussion Our motivation for the new profile arises from a shopping mall announcements scenario. uppose there are many users walking at the shopping mall corridors that wishes to know some of promotions, prices, type of products and services available in this mall using their Bluetooth enabled devices. Each user press a start button and waits for the device to show on the screen only announcement groups related to the user interests. Figure 4 shows some of the proposed universal interest groups, for example a university student would be interested in announcements related to book stores, banks, computer, internet, sports, and entertainments. While a tourist person would be interested in announcement groups related to promotions, banks, hotels, local food, international food, and fly tickets. o the student Bluetooth device would retrieve announcements like private.booktores, private,bank, private.computer.pc, private.computer.internet, private.entertainment.port, private.entertainment.cinema. While the tourist Bluetooth device would retrieve announcements like private.hopping.promotions, private.bank, private.hotel.5star, private.food.malay.melaka, private.food.international. ome public announcements that both student and tourist would retrieve are public.weatherforecast, public.location.polis, public..location.hospital. The proposed Bluetooth profile enhancement mechanism is trying to impalement a universal model (to be use anywhere in the world like Usenet newsgroup) for mobile users with
different device platform specially for devices with limited processor speed, memory, and storage capabilities to can use Bluetooth technology anywhere as long as there device supports Bluetooth and java technologies. In which the mobile device can connect to any Bluetooth announcement database server, then retrieve on_location interested announcements. Figure 5 shows the proposed model implementation, to can impalement the proposed model following should be provided: a) Bluetooth technology: used to connect different mobile devices with the database server on wireless manner b) Java technology: java language gives programmer a consistent way to write code that can be executed over wide range of devices erver 1 Administration On_Location announcement Data Laptop (more than 10 MB RAM) erver 2 Administration Internet Bluetooth scatternet PDA (521 1 MB RAM) Location 1 On_Location Bluetooth erver mart Phone (32 K RAM) On_Location announcement Data Bluetooth scatternet On_Location Bluetooth erver Location 2 Figure 5. Proposed On_Location advertising model in heterogeneous dynamic environments using Bluetooth and Java Technologies The problem of defining scatternet formation criteria is itself an open research issue that is heavily dependent on the envisioned applications. Although we do not address it in this paper because of designing a Bluetooth scatternet, where bandwidth and power are limited resources, latency behavior is likely to be quit different from traditional LANs, and the network topology is likely to change as nodes enter and leave the network. Through out the design of the new profile our aim as the next stage of our research is to build a scatternet formation protocol which can be implemented on top of Bluetooth and java technology. We intend to use a ring topology in formation of our scatternet. Although our implementation will runs on top of Bluetooth simulator environment to establish a scatternet which is guaranteed to be connected and have a ring structure. There is still much work that remains to be done. The formation protocol, is out of the scope of current paper should be in the subject of future research efforts.
5. Conclusion In this paper, we have presented a new Bluetooth proposed profile. We first study the Bluetooth standard profiles and then propose a new one that we name it Announcement Profile. Announcement profile is intended to be tested under shopping mall corridors scenario where users walks in the mall corridors and try to retrieve announcements by pressing a button on their Bluetooth enabled devices. A nice feature of the announcement profile is that the user does not need to pass throw all mall corridors to find the interested product or service. Although, as universal format announcements users can use the same device clicking on the same button wherever they are in the world to retrieve the same on-location interest announcement group. References [7] Jordan, R., and Abdallah, C., Wireless Communication and Networking: An Overview. IEEE Antenna s and Propagation Magazine, February 202, Vol. 44. No. 1. [8] Elizabeth, M., and Chai-keong, T., A Review of current Routing protocols for ad hoc mobile wireless networks, IEEE personal Communication, P46-55, April 1999. [9] airam, K., Gunasekaran, N., and Rama, R., Bluetooth in Wireless Communication, IEEE Communication Magazine, P90-96, June 2002. [10] Matt, M., ailesh, R., and Brian, R., In earch of Bluetooth, CMP Media, LLC Electronics Group 2001. [11] mart Handheld Group, Bluetooth Technology Overview, Helwlett- Packard Company, White Paper, April 2003. [1] Bradbury, D., Disable the Cable, Personal Computer World, March 2000 [2] The Bluetooth pecial Interest Group http://www.bluetooth.com. [3] Miller, A.B., and Bisdikian, C., Bluetooth Reveald, Printice Hall PTR, Upper addle River, NJ 07458, 2001. [4] Miklos, G., Racz, A. R., Turanyi, Z., Valko, A., and Johansson, P., Performance Aspects of Bluetooth catternet Formation. MobiHoc 200, PP147-148, boston, Aug 2000. [5] Zaruba, G.V., Basagni,., and Chlamtac, I., Bluetrees catternet Formation to Enable Bluetooth-Based Ad Hoc networks, ICC 2001, vol.1, pp 273-277, June 2001. [6] Bisdikian, C., An Overview of the Bluetooth technology, IEEE communication Magazine, P86-94, Dec 2001.