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Study of Bluetooth protocol and applications

Technical Report · September 2021

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.25521.71526

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 Study of Bluetooth protocol and applications
Pooja D. Pandit,
Mumbai University,
India

Abstract—Bluetooth is one of the popular technology II. D ISCUSSION ON B LUETOOTH T ECHNOLOGY

standards for exchanging data over short distances. In this
paper, a study of Bluetooth protocol and its applications is A. Bluetooth History
presented. We also thoroughly study prior art that enable Bluetooth is a wireless technology standard
advancements in Bluetooth technologies. Further, we also for exchanging data over short distances. This
provide an overview of prior art in Wi-Fi which is one of
the coexisting technologies with Bluetooth.
technology was created to solve a simple problem
of replacing the cables used on mobile hand held
devices with RF communication technologies.
I. I NTRODUCTION Consequently, one of the earliest applications of
Bluetooth was in the context of mobile devices.
Bluetooth is one of the key technologies that The technology encompasses a simple low-cost,
enables transmission of packets between two low-power, global radio system for integration into
wireless enabled devices over a short distances. mobile devices. Such devices can form a quick
Bluetooth technology is popular for a number of ad-hoc secure ”piconet” and communicate among
applications such as streaming music, wireless the connected devices.
mouse control, etc.
Bluetooth is a wireless technology designed
Due to its popularity and potential to create to connect devices of different functions such as
new applications in the future, it is important to telephones, notebooks, computers (desktop and
understand the protocols involved in Bluetooth laptop), cameras, printers, coffee makers, and so
operation. Further, it is also important to understand on. A Bluetooth LAN is an adhoc network, which
the challenges involved in design of next generation means that the network is formed spontaneously;
Bluetooth technology. the devices, sometimes called gadgets, find each
other and make a network called a piconet.
In this paper, we first present an overview
of Bluetooth related protocol and discuss its
applications. Next we present an overview of prior B. Bluetooth Topology
art in Bluetooth as well as in Wi-Fi. Bluetooth defines two types of networks: Piconet
and Scatternet. Details of these two types of
The organization of this paper is as follows. networks are provided below.
In Section II, we provide a discussion on Blue-
tooth Technology including the topologies and the 1) Piconets: A Bluetooth network is called a
Bluetooth architecture. Section III discusses the piconet, or a small net. A piconet can have up to
operation protocol of Bluetooth technology. Section eight stations, one of which is called the primary;
IV provides a discussion on Bluetooth Enabling the rest are called secondaries. All the Secondary
Technologies and Section V provides details of Wi- stations synchronize their clocks and hopping
Fi Bluetooth Interference issues. We conclude in sequence with the primary. The communication
Section VI. between the primary and the secondary can be
 Fig. 2: An illustration to depict a Bluetooth Scatternet

Fig. 1: An illustration to depict a Bluetooth Piconet

one-to-one or one-to-many. An illustration to depict

a piconet is shown in Fig. 1.

Although a piconet can have a maximum of

seven secondaries, an additional eight secondaries
can be in the parked state. A secondary in a parked
state is synchronized with the primary, but cannot
take part in communication until it is moved from
Fig. 3: Bluetooth Architecture
the parked state. Because only eight stations can
be active in a piconet, activating a station from the
parked state means that an active station must go
• Band: Bluetooth uses a 2.4-GHz ISM band
to the parked state.
divided into 79 channels of 1 MHz each.
• FHSS: Bluetooth uses the frequency-hopping
2) Scatternet: Piconets can be combined to form
spread spectrum (FHSS) method in the physical
what is called a scatternet. A secondary station in
layer to avoid interference from other devices
one piconet can be the primary in another piconet.
or other networks. Bluetooth hops 1600 times
This station can receive messages from the primary
per second, which means that each device
in the first piconet (as a secondary) and, acting
changes its modulation frequency 1600 times
as a primary, deliver them to secondaries in the
per second. The dwell time is 625 microsec-
second piconet. A station can be a member of two
onds.
piconets. An illustration to show a scatternet is
depicted in Fig. 2. 2) Baseband Layer: The baseband layer is
roughly equivalent to the MAC sub-layer in LANs.
The access method is TDMA. The primary and
C. Bluetooth Node Architecture secondary communicate with each other using time
A bluetooth node architecture is as shown in slots. The length of a time slot is exactly the same
Fig. 3. An overview of each of the layers of the as the dwell time, 625 microseconds. Two types
Bluetooth Architecture is as follows. of links can be created between a primary and a
1) Radio Layer: The radio layer is roughly secondary:
equivalent to the physical layer of the Internet • SCQ Links: A synchronous connection-
model. Bluetooth devices are low-power and have a oriented (SQA) link is used when avoiding
range of 10 m. latency (delay in data delivery) is more
 important than integrity (error-free delivery).
In an SCQ link, a physical link is created
between the primary and a secondary by
reserving specific slots at regular intervals.
The basic unit of connection is two slots, one
for each direction. If a packet is damaged, it
is never retransmitted.
• ACL Links: An asynchronous connectionless
link (ACL) is used when data integrity is more
important than avoiding latency. In this type
of link, if a payload encapsulated in the frame
Fig. 4: Single Secondary Communication
is corrupted, it is retransmitted. A secondary
returns an ACL frame in the available odd-
numbered slot if and only if the previous slot
has been addressed to it.
3) L2CAP: The Logical Link Control and Adap-
tation Protocol, or L2CAP is roughly equivalent to
the LLC sub-layer in LANs. It is used for data
exchange on an ACL link; SCQ channels do not
use L2CAP.
4) Other Upper Layers: Bluetooth defines sev-
eral protocols for the upper layers that use the
services of L2CAP; these protocols are specific for
each purpose. Fig. 5: Multiple Secondary Communication
III. B LUETOOTH O PERATION
Bluetooth networking transmits data via low- if the packet in the previous slot was addressed
power radio waves. It communicates on a frequency to it. All secondaries listen on even-numbered
of 2.45 gigahertz (actually between 2.402 GHz and slots, but only one secondary sends in any odd-
2.480 GHz, to be exact). This frequency band has numbered slot.
been set aside by international agreement for the
use of industrial, scientific and medical devices IV. B LUETOOTH E NABLING T ECHNOLOGIES
(ISM). In this section, we present prior work related to
Bluetooth. We focus on three key aspects which are
• Single-Secondary Communication: If the pi- Antenna Design, usage of Bluetooth in localization
conet has only one secondary, the TDMA op- and Bluetooth Security.
eration is very simple. The time is divided into
slots of 625 microseconds. The primary uses A. Antenna Design
even-numbered slots (0, 2, 4, ...); the secondary Antenna design is one of the key aspects of a
uses odd-numbered slots (1, 3, 5, ...). In slot 0, Bluetooth enabling hardware. As Bluetooth devices
the primary sends, and the secondary receives; tend to have a size and cost constraint, design
in slot 1, the secondary sends, and the primary of a size and cost effective antenna structure is
receives. extremely for Bluetooth operation. To enable effi-
• Multiple-Secondary Communication: The pro- cient Bluetooth communication, [1] presents a novel
cess is a little more involved if there is more compact antenna design which leverages a two
than one secondary in the piconet. Again, the element design. A first element is used to generate
primary uses the even-numbered slots, but a on band of operation. Another element is placed
secondary sends in the next odd-numbered slot compactly around the first element to generate a new
band of operation. The coupling creates a resonant network to reduce any potential interference due to
frequency support that is suitable for Bluetooth co-existence issues.
applications. A similar approach is used in [2] and
[3] to provide Bluetooth support. Other designs of VI. C ONCLUSION
antenna can also be potentially extended to support
Bluetooth applications [4], [5]. In this paper, a study of Bluetooth Technology,
its node architecture and protocols is presented.
B. Positioning with Bluetooth
Further, some prior work on key Bluetooth enabling
Bluetooth based positioning is one of the key technologies has also been studied. Finally, we study
applications of Bluetooth in recent times. Prior work Wi-Fi as a co-existing technology with Bluetooth.
has studied a number of approaches for achieving
this goal. Some of the approaches involve leveraging
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