Messaging Bluetooth for your future…..

By,
Mithun Sheth Vinit Tople
K. J. Somaiya College of Engg . K. J. Somaiya College of Engg
. Bombay Bombay
Final year (I.T.) Final year (Computers)
mithunsheth@hotmail.com vinittople@indiatimes.com
ABSTRACT
The primary purpose of the paper is to take a deeper insight to the current existing technologies
like Bluetooth and Short Messaging Service and develop a new standard by amalgamating the
two, which thereby removes the basic constraint of the limited range in Bluetooth and makes it
wide enough by making a few changes. Thus, expanding current horizons of the new and
promising technologies like Bluetooth by all limits and the applications being infinite to gear up
for the next technical decade.
Think if you can control your T.V. set in New York by switching a few buttons in the Mumbai
local trains…! Sounds unreal duh! But this paper has a Convergence Plan, which promises it to
happen.
The paper is primarily divided into 3 parts
• Gives us a brief idea of how Bluetooth works today
• Gives us a brief idea of how SMS technology work today
• The Convergence plan
It basically deals with the current SMS technology which sends a message from one mobile to
another mobile and from which at the other end of the mobile on receiving the SMS it decodes
the special message as Bluetooth and converts it into a Bluetooth message which can be given to
the Bluetooth chip to send as a message to control devices in the vicinity. A slight modification
could be done by considering software, which can be installed at both ends of the PC (something
analogous to messengers existing today), which can then be used to control the devices near the
PC with Bluetooth technology
The plan concentrates on various topics like the basic logic involved, the protocol of how it will
work, the reliability feature, the modifications that can be made to suffice the same need and the
advantages of the technique used.

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Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a low cost, low power, short-range radio technology, originally developed as a
cable replacement to connect devices such as mobile phone handsets, headsets and portable
computers. This in itself sounds relatively innocuous; however, by enabling standardised
wireless communications between any electrical devices, Bluetooth has created the notion of a
personal area network(PAN), a kind of close range wireless network that looks set to
revolutionise the way people interact with the information technology landscape around them.
No longer do people need to connect plug into, install enable or configure anything to anything
else. Through a ubiquitous standardised communications subsystem, devices will communicate
seamlessly. One does not need to know where one’s cellular phone is, or even if it is switched
on. As soon as the web browser appears on the mobile computer screen, a link is established with
the phone the Internet Service Provider is connected to, and the use is surfing the web. The
Bluetooth specification is an open, global specification defining the complete system from the
radio right upto the application level. The protocol stack is usually implemented partly in
hardware and partly as software running on a microprocessor, with different implementations
partitioning the functionality between hardware and software in different ways.

Bluetooth’s origins
In 1994, when Ericsson Mobile Communications began a study to examine alternatives to the
cables that linked their mobile phones with accessories. The study looked at using radio links.
Radio isn’t directional, and it doesn’t need line of sight, so it has obvious advantages over the
infra-red links previously used between handsets and devices. There were many requirements for
the study, including handling both speech and data, so that it could connect phones to both
handsets and computing devices. Out of this study was born the specification for Bluetooth
Wireless technology. The bluetooth special interest group SIG is a group of companies working
together to promote and define bluetooth specification. In April 2000, the SIG membership has
grown to 1790 members with several big giants like Ericsson, Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Nokia,
Toshiba, Lucent, Motorola etc. Bluetooth aims to be widely available, inexpensive, convenient,
easy to use, reliable, small and low power technology.

Protocol Stack
A key feature of the bluetooth specification is that it aims to allow devices from
manufacturers to work with one another. To this end bluetooth just does not define a radio
system, it also defines a software stack to enable applications to find other bluetooth devices in
the area, discover what services they can offer and use those services.the bluetooth stack is
defined as a series of layers though there are some features with cross layers. The bluetooth
profiles give guidelines on how the application should use the bluetooth protocol stack.
TCS(Telephony Control Protocol Specification) provides telephony services.
SDP(Service Discovery Protocol) lets bluetooth devices discover what other devices support.
WAP, OBEX provides interfaces to the higher layer parts of other communication protocol.
RFCOMM provides RS232 like serial interface.
L2CAP(Logic Link Control and Adaptation) multiplexes data from higher layers and converts
between different packets sizes.
HCI(Host Control Interface) handles communication between a separate host and a bluetooth
module.

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The LM(Link manager) controls and configures the link to other devices.
The Baseband and Link Controller controls the physical links via the radio, assembling
packets and controlling frequency hopping.
The radio modulates and demodulates data for transmission and reception on air.

Bluetooth devices operate at a 2.4GHz in the globally available license free ISM(Industrial,
Scientific and Medical) band, which obeys a basic set of power and spectral omissions and
interference specifications. This means that bluetooth has to be very robust, as there are many
existing users and polluters of this shared spectrum. The operating band is divided into 1 MHz
spaced channels, each signaling data at 1Mega Symbol per second, so as to obtain the maximum
available channel bandwidth with the chosen modulation scheme of GFSK (Gaussian Frequency
Shift Keying), this equates to 1 Mbps. Each bluetooth timeslot lasts 625 microseconds and
devices hop once per packet, which will be every slot, every 3 slots or every 5 slots. Design for
low power portable applications, the radio power must be minimized. The different operation
ranges are approximately 10 m, 20 m, 100 m with lowest 10 m and highest 100 m.

Master, Slave, Slots and Frequency Hopping

Bluetooth devices can operate in two modes: as a Master or as a Slave. It is the Master that sets
the frequency hopping sequence. Slaves synchronise to the Master in time and frequency by
following the Master’s hopping sequence. In addition to controlling the frequency hop sequence,
master controls when devices are allowed to transmit. The Master controls how the total
available bandwidth is divided among the Slaves by deciding hen and how often to communicate
with each Slave.

Piconets and Scatternets

A collection of Slave devices operating together with one common Master is referred to
as a piconet. All devices on a piconet follow the frequency hopping sequence and timing of the
Master. The specification limits the number of Slaves in a piconet to seven, with each Slave only

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communicating with the shared Master. However, a larger coverage area or a greater number of
network members of more than one piconet.

Piconet Scatternets

Voice and Data Links

Bluetooth allows both time critical data communication such as that required for voice or audio,
as well as high speed time insensitive packet data communication. To carry such data, two
different types of links are defined between any two devices. These are SCO (Synchronous
Connection Oriented) links for voice communication and ACL(Asynchronous Connectionless)
links for data communication.
For security of link encryption and authentication, Bluetooth uses a strong contemporary cipher
algorithm available in public domain called SAFER+, which generates 128-bit cipher keys from
a 128-bit plain text input.

Applications and Profiles

At its most basic Bluetooth wireless technology replaces a cable and untethers device. This
makes it suitable for short range connections between a variety of mobile device such as :
Mobile cellular phone to Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) through an access
point.,to a notebook PC, to a handset.from LAN acess points for laptops to
handsetsCommunication between laptops and palmtops.

Using Bluetooth
Bluetooth is unlike any wired network, as there is no need to physically attach a cable to the s
you are communicating with, indeed, you may not know exactly what devices you are talking to
and what their capabilities are. To cope with this, Bluetooth provides inquiry and paging
mechanisms and a Service Discovery Protocol(SDP).

Discovering Bluetooth devices

Imagine two Bluetooth enabled devices, say, a cell phone and a laptop computer. The cell phone
is capable of acting as a modem using the dial up networking profile and it periodically scans to
see if anyone wants to use it. The user of the laptop opens up an application that needs a
Bluetooth dial up networking connection. To use this application, the laptop knows it need to
establish a Bluetooth link to a device supporting the dial up networking profile. The first stage to

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establishing such a connection is finding out what Bluetooth enabled device are in the area, so
the laptop performs an inquiry to look for devices in the neighborhood. To do this the laptop
transmits a series of inquiry packets, and eventually the cell phone replies with a Frequency Hop
Synchronization(GHS) packet. The FHS packet contains all the information that the laptop needs
to create a connection to the cell phone.

Connecting to a Service Discovery Database

To find out whether a device supports a particular service, the application needs to
connect to the device and use the Service Discovery Protocol(SDP). Once an ACL connection
has been established, a Logical Link Control and Adaptation Protocol(L2CAP) connection can
be set up across it. The various steps in the process are explained with the following figure.

Retrieving Information on Services

Discoverability and Connectability Modes

It is important to realize that for a connection to be established using Bluetooth wireless
technology, both ends of the links have to be willing to connect. Some devices may be set so that
they will not scan for inquiries; in this case, other devices cannot discover them, and they will
effectively be invisible. Similarly, some devices may be set so that they do not perform page
scans. In these cases, they can still initiate connections, but they will not hear other devices
trying to connect to them. Applications can choose whether to make devices connectable or
discoverable. A connection cannot be forced on a device which is not in the correct mode to
accept it.

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Short Message Service
Short Message Service (SMS) is the transmission of short text messages to and from a mobile
phone, fax machine and/or IP address. Messages must be no longer than 160 alphanumeric
characters and contain no images or graphics

The point-to-point SMS provides a mechanism for transmitting short messages to and from
wireless handsets. The service makes use of a short message service center (SMSC), which acts
as a store-and-forward system for short messages. The wireless network provides for the
transport of short messages between the SMSCs and wireless handsets. In contrast to existing
text message transmission services such as alphanumeric paging, the service elements are
designed to provide guaranteed delivery of text messages to the destination. A distinguishing
characteristic of the service is that an active mobile handset is able to receive or submit a short
message at any time, independent of whether or not a voice or data call is in progress. Temporary
failures are identified, and the short message is stored in the network until the destination
becomes available. SMS is characterized by out-of-band packet delivery and low-bandwidth
message transfer. Initial applications of SMS focused on eliminating alphanumeric pagers by
permitting two-way general-purpose messaging and notification services, primarily for voice
mail. As technology and networks matured, a variety of services were introduced, including
electronic mail and fax integration, paging integration, interactive banking, and information
services such as stock quotes. Wireless data applications include downloading of subscriber
identity module (SIM) cards for activation, debit, and profile-editing purposes.

2. Network Elements and Architecture

The basic network structure of the SMS is depicted in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Network Elements and Architecture

Short Messaging Entities

Short messaging entity (SME) is an entity, which may receive or send short messages. The SME
may be located in the fixed network, a mobile station, or another service center.

Short Message Service Center

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Short message service center (SMSC) is responsible for the relaying and store-and-forwarding of
a short message between an SME and mobile station.

SMS–Gateway/Interworking Mobile Switching Center

The SMS–gateway mobile switching center (SMS–GMSC) is an MSC capable of receiving a

short message from an SMSC, interrogating a home location register (HLR) for routing
information, and delivering the short message to the visited MSC of the recipient mobile station.
The SMS interworking MSC (SMS–IWMSC) is an MSC capable of receiving a short message
from the mobile network and submitting it to the appropriate SMSC. The SMS–GMSC/SMS–
IWMSC are typically integrated with the SMSC.

Home Location Register

The HLR is a database used for permanent storage and management of subscriptions and service
profiles. Upon interrogation by the SMSC, the HLR provides the routing information for the
indicated subscriber. The HLR also informs the SMSC, which has previously initiated
unsuccessful short message delivery attempts to a specific mobile station, that the mobile station
is now recognized by the mobile network to be accessible.

Mobile Switching Center

The MSC performs the switching functions of the system and controls calls to and from other
telephone and data systems.

Visitor Location Register

The visitor location register (VLR) is a database that contains temporary information about
subscribers. This information is needed by the MSC to service visiting subscribers.

The Base Station System

All radio-related functions are performed in the base-station system (BSS). The BSS consists of
base-station controllers (BSCs) and the base-transceiver stations (BTSs), and its primary
responsibility is to transmit voice and data traffic between the mobile stations.

Subscriber Services

SMS comprises two basic point-to-point services.

• mobile-originated short message (MO–SM)

• mobile-terminated short message (MT–SM)

MO–SMs are transported from the handset to the SMSC and can be destined to other mobile
subscribers or for subscribers on fixed networks such as paging networks or electronic mail
networks. MT–SMs are transported from the SMSC to the handset and can be submitted to the

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SMSC by other mobile subscribers via MO–SM or other sources such as voice-mail systems,
paging networks, or operators.

For MT–SM, a report is always returned to the SMSC either confirming the short-message
delivery to the handset or informing the SMSC of the short-message delivery failure and
identifying the reason for failure. Similarly, for MO–SM, a report is always returned to the
handset either confirming the short-message delivery to the SMSC or informing the handset of
the encountered failure and identifying the reason.

3.Mobile-Terminated Short Message Example

Figure 3 depicts the successful MT–SM scenario. For convenience, the GSM method is
illustrated. However, the IS–41 method is similar.

Figure 3. MT–SM Scenario

The short message is submitted from the SME to the SMSC.

1. After completing its internal processing, the SMSC interrogates the HLR and receives the
routing information for the mobile subscriber.

2. The SMSC sends the short message to the MSC using the forwardShortMessage
operation.

3. The MSC retrieves the subscriber information from the VLR. This operation may include
an authentication procedure.

4. The MSC transfers the short message to the MS.

5. The MSC returns to the SMSC the outcome of the forwardShortMessage operation.

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 6. If requested by the SME, the SMSC returns a status report indicating delivery of the short
message.

6. Mobile-Originated Short Message Example

Figure 4 depicts the successful MO–SM scenario. For convenience, the GSM method is shown.
However, the IS–41 method is similar.

Figure 4. MO–SM Scenario

The MS transfers the SM to the MSC.

1. The MSC interrogates the VLR to verify that the message transfer does not violate the
supplementary services invoked or the restrictions imposed.

2. The MSC sends the short message to the SMSC using the forwardShortMessage
operation.

3. The SMSC delivers the short message to the SME.

4. The SMSC acknowledges to the MSC the successful outcome of the

forwardShortMessage operation.

5. The MSC returns to the MS the outcome of the MO–SM operation.

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The Convergence plan

Thus the entire application based idea revolves around the fact of the convergence of two of the
existing technologies i.e. bluetooth and SMS . Thus with the help of which the device at a
particular location can be easily controlled by a distant located user. Here the user can control all
the devices within the range of the bluetooth enabled phone B
with a normal mobile phone A and with the user located at any distance from the personal area
network (PAN ).Hence our area of interest is considering the conversion of the message in SMS
from the corresponding bluetooth oriented signal to be given to the bluetooth chip in mobile B.
There are various considerations to this idea
1. How will the entire thing work?
2. How will the mobile A know which devices are in the vicinity of mobile B.?
3. Reliability of the entire process?
4. How will the mobile A know that the corresponding process has already occurred?
We will answer to the above queries in the preceding sections.

The basic idea of how the SDP (Service Discovery Potocol) of bluetooth works ?
In the current bluetooth technology protocol stack for communication there is a layer called SDP,
which is, located just above L2CAPin the stack. SDP provides the mean of to find a device that
will offer service for you. SDP relies on L2CAP links being established between client and
server once an L2CAP link is established it can be used to find out about the services and how to
connect between them. So, L2CAP does not handle connections to service itself but it merely
provide s information; so, to find and connect

To a service offered by an SDP server a client must go through the following steps:

1 Establish L2CAP connection to remote channel using the channel identified by PSM
2 Search for the specific class of service or browse them.
3 Retrieve attributes needed to connect to the chosen service
4 Establish a non SDP connection to use this service.

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An SDP server is a device, which offers service or services to other Bluetooth devices.
Information about SDP is maintained in SDP databases. SDP client use database provided by
servers. To allow them to do this, servers and clients exchange information about services using
records.

A device wanting to find out the services in the area is an n SDP client
A device offering services is an SDP server. Devices can be simultaneously both clients and
servers.

Browsing SDP records:

To make it easier to find a service you want services are arranged in a hierarchy structure as a
tree, which can be browsed. Client by examining the root of the hierarchy, then follow out the
hierarchy out to the leaf nodes., where individual services are described.
It is upto each service provider to decide which service will be browsabled and how the
hierarchy must be created .

Reliability based feature

One of the most important considerations which need to be taken care is that, Is the right mobile
A accessing the PAN in our consideration that of mobile B.? We need to take utmost care that
any anonymous mobile does not send an SMS message in bluetooth form to control an PAN
which he should not actually . In order to avioid this we initially itself lay the consideration that
mobile B. must activate mobile A ‘s number to get and react to Bluetooth oriented SMS
messages from it and from any other mobile it should neglect it. Thus we can avoid the danger of
any mobile A handling any mobile B.

Protocol for implementation

Consider the above two fundamentals we suggest a protocol to the same as:

• Mobile A sends a Bluetooth request message to B.

• Mobile B checks for the authenticity of Mobile A and if authentic responds
• Mobile B checks the SDP for each of the device in vicinity
• Mobile B along with acknowledgement sends the list of active devices
• Mobile A selects the menu oriented to Bluetooth message and gets the active list devices
in its handset.
• Mobile A send request on it sends the corresponding SMS to Mobile B ‘s memory
• The Mobile B will once again check its header to check for the confirmation that it is a
Bluetooth message.
• It performs the check for errors
• The corresponding opcode oriented signal is given to the Bluetooth chip
• Bluetooth converts this into the required Bluetooth signal and sends it to the device (In
this case A.C. ON)
• After the operation is done a confirmation is sent back to the Mobile A user.

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Modifications in the plan
• We can implement the above protocol by also using fixed receivers instead of Mobile B
at the PAN area which can act as a two way pager to receive and transmit Bluetooth
oriented message to a particular network.
• In this plan we use the current laid network of Internet to implement the entire
protocol .We need to use software to communicate between the two computers .The
software needs to be installed at both the ends. The Software initially does the reliability
check by normal login name and password .The computer B.can be programmed in such
a way that after a particular time period it comes online and checks the user status. If the
user is not online it logs off it also checks a particular bit status which could be set by the
user. If the bit status is set then the computer stays online for a longer period. As soon as
the user logs on the same software the user can give commands to the computer to act for
a specific device by its own software. Also the user could intimate the computer to come
online by using a message sent to the receiver station if present in the PAN.
The entire thing would look as

The software at terminal B. initially gives the Bluetooth oriented devices present in the range of
the computer terminal B. The user at terminal A gets to know the devices and then sends the
appropriate command by selecting it from the service required .The entire service list could be
well updated from the net.

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Applications of this technology

The entire idea could be considered revolutionary since this plan eliminates the basic
Bluetooth hindrance of limiting to a particular area and hence the concept of Bluetooth can
be applied to various devices at distant places. Here are few of the examples
 The basic File transfer can be attained in a more efficient way since any file you want
can be easily obtained by messaging to the LAN to obtain the file. Consider a student
working at home who wants the file of a program he has half done in his lab can
easily obtain it by connecting to the lab via the software and then getting the data
directly from it. The same logic can also be applied to any office .So slowly it will be
surely evolving into a wireless world
 Consider you have left your office in summer where before entering your home you
would like to have an instant coffee ready the home ambience to suit your
temperament and obviously the food ready in the Oven. .. All this could seem to be a
distant dream to many but this messaging facility would enable everything possible
since a single message could instruct each of the things to get you what you want.
Life would never be better than this !!
This eventually lets wireless communication to imbibe in each one’s life where
everything from data transfer to controlling equipments could be a click away
 Consider the instance of current city life where health is at stake at each instant and so
you could be every well monitored by doctors throughout at each instant without even
being nearby him or even visiting him once a day .It is the other way round that he
informs you whenever things go wrong in your body .Now this is also very simple to
implement We already have Bluetooth enabled watches available which also have the
features of pulse count, pressure count, to sugar and cholesterol level. Your mobile is
obviously always with you and so the doctor gets all the report he wants form your
watch at instant and he is monitoring you at each instant .For all obese husband’s
could be in for a rude shock because these watches could also have features like
calories intake!!
 With the increased air traffic and the no. of accidents in air a major revolution could
occur as, consider your flight is in mid air and the pilot discovers some technical fault
.To overcome this fault we could have a receiver station installed in the plane and all
the main technical parts Bluetooth enabled so the engineers on land could also check
the basic condition of each of the equipment trying to locate the faulty part and take
some decision saving many lives even when the flights on air.
 Why send soldiers on the border when you could have a technical army to fight and
control from far? This could be very well done if all the main fighting equipments
could be controlled from far.
Bibliography
• Regarding Bluetooth
Reference Book :Introduction to Bluetooth
Author:Jennifer Bray & Charles F Sturman
Edition: Low Price Edition Page no: 1-22
• Regarding SMS
Short Message Service tutorial – Notes of ADC telecommunication

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