Bluetooth

An overview

Introduction

What is Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a universal radio interface in the 2.4 GHz frequency band that enables electronic devices to connect and communicate wirelessly via short-range (10-100 m), ad-hoc networks. Key Features : Peak data rate : 1 Mbps Low power : peak tx power <= 20 dBm Low cost : target is $5-10 per piece Ability to simultaneously handle both voice and data Line of sight not required

Bluetooth History
Invented in 1994 by L. M. Ericsson, Sweden Named after Harald Blaatand Bluetooth, king of Denmark 940-981 A.D. Bluetooth SIG founded by Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba in Feb 1998 More than 1900 members today Bluetooth version 1.0 and 1.1 have been released

Motivation for Bluetooth

Cordless headset mouse Cell phone

Ubiquitous Computing

environment of intelligent networked devices

Mobile access to LANs/Internet

Home Networking

Started as a Cable replacement technology

Automatic Synchronization of data

Voice applications hands-free headset

System Challenges
Work across a diverse set of devices with varying computing power and memory Dynamic environment - the number, location and variety of devices changing - connection establishment, routing and service discovery protocols have to take this into consideration Unconscious connection establishment Size of the implementation should be small. The power consumption should not be more than a fraction of the host device .

System Architecture
Applications
SDP IP RFCOMM

Data
Audio L2CAP Link Manager

Baseband RF
Bluetooth Protocol Stack

The Radio, Baseband and Link Manager are on firmware. The higher layers could be in software. The interface is then through the Host Controller (firmware and driver) The HCI interfaces defined for Bluetooth are UART, RS232 and USB.

Bluetooth Air Interface

Piconet channel definition Physical link definition Packet definition

Choices made
ISM Band
Global Availability License Free 2,400-2,483.5 MHz in Europe and US 2,471-2,497 MHz in Japan

Frequency Hopping
Interference from baby monitors, garage door openers, cordless phones and microwave ovens. Spread-Spectrum for interference suppression FH supports low power, low cost radio implementations

Frequency Hopping
1Mhz

79

83.5 Mhz

Divide Frequency band into 1 MHz hop channels Radio hops from one channel to another in a pseudo -random manner as dictated by a hop sequence The instantaneous (hop) bandwidth remains small Narrow band interference rejection

Piconets, Masters and Slaves

In principle each unit is a peer with the same hardware capabilities Two or more Bluetooth units that share a channel form a piconet One of the participating units is becomes the master (by defn the unit that establishes the piconet). Participants may change roles if a slave unit wants to take over as master Only one master in a piconet. Upto 7 slaves m s

Piconet Channel
The piconet channel is represented by a pseudo-random hopping sequence (through 79/23 RF frequencies) The hopping sequence is unique for the piconet and is determined by the device address of the master of the piconet. The phase is determined by the master clock. Channel is divided into time slots - 625 microsecs each . Each slot corresponds to a different hop frequency. Time Division Duplex - master and slave alternately transmit/listen. Packet start aligned with slot start

Piconet Channel
m

s1
625 sec

f1

f2

f3

f4

Physical Link
Synchronous Connection Oriented (SC0) Link : - symmetric point-to-point link between m and s - reserved 2 consecutive slots at regular intervals - master can support upto 3 simultaneous SCO links - mainly for audio/voice - never retransmitted Asynchronous Connection-less (ACL) Link : - symmetric/asymmetric - point-to-multipoint between master and all slaves - on a per-slot basis (polling scheme for control) - only one ACL link per piconet - packets retransmitted (ARQ)

Packets
All data on the piconet channel is conveyed in packets 13 packet types are defined for the Baseband layer - Control packets (ID, NULL, FHS, POLL) - Voice packets (SCO) - Data packets (ACL) Multi-slot packets (1/3/5) : To support high data rates. Packets always sent on a single-hop carrier that for the first slot. After multi-slot packet revert to original hop sequence. Packet format - (68/72 bits) Access Code, (54 bits) Header, (0-2745 bits) Payload.

Packet Format
72 bits 54 bits Access code Header 0 - 2745 bits Payload

SCO
Voice Single-slot packets 64 kbps Unprotected/ 1/3 or 2/3 FEC Never retransmitted Robust CVSD encoding used
header

ACL
data 1/3/5 slot packets Unprotected/ 2/3 FEC ARQ scheme retransmit lost data pkts
CRC

Data Rates on ACL

TYPE SYMMETRI C (Kbps) DM1 (2/3 FEC) 108.8
DH1
(unprotected)

ASYMMETR IC (Kbps) 108.8 108.8

172.8 384.0 576.0 477.8 721.0 172.8 54.4 86.4 36.3 57.6.

172.8 256.0 384.0 286.7 432.6

DM3 DH3 DM5 DH5

Access Code
Access code is used for timing synchronization, inquiry and paging. There are 3 types of access codes
Channel Access Code (CAC) : Used to identify a unique piconet. Derived from the device address of the master of the piconet. All normal (non inquiry and paging) packets on the piconet will use the CAC. Device Access Code (DAC) : Used for paging procedure (initial synchronization). Derived from the device address of the slave. Inquiry Access Code : Used for inquiry procedure (to get device addresses). 2 types : Generic and Device IACs

Header
Addressing (3) : Max 7 slaves per piconet Packet type (4) : 13 packet types (some unused) Flow control (1) 1-bit ARQ (1) : Broadcast packets are not Acked Sequencing (1) : for filtering retransmitted packets HEC (8) : Verify Header Integrity Total = 18 bits Encode with 1/3 FEC to get 54 bits

Error Correction/Flow Control

Error Correction - 1/3 FEC - 2/3 FEC - ARQ (Retransmit till Ack is received/ timeout) Flow Control - FIFO queues at TX and RX - If RX queue is full the flow control bit is set in the header of the next packet sent. - The TX freezes its FIFO queue till the bit is reset.

NETWORKING
Connection Establishment Piconet Communication Scatternet Communication

Connection Establishment
Two step process : Inquiry to get device addr Paging for Synchronization Inquiry : Uses the Inquiry hop sequence and the IAC (DIAC or GIAC) Paging : Uses the Paging hop sequence and the DAC of the device to be paged

Connection Establishment - Inquiry

No master and slaves at this point

Inquiry

Inquiry pkt

Inquiry Scan FHS pkt

Inquiry Response

Device A

Device B

Connection Establishment - Paging

Master Page Slave

Page pkt
ID pkt

Page Scan Slave Page Response Uses FHS to get CAC and clk info

Master Page Response Assigns active addr

FHS pkt
ID pkt POLL NULL

Connected

Connected

Connection Establishment times

Inquiry Typical Max 5.12 s 15.36 s

Paging 0.64 s 7.38 s

Connected

Connection Modes
Active Mode : Device actively participates on the piconet channel Power Saving modes Sniff Mode : Slave device listens to the piconet at a reduced rate . Least power efficient. Hold Mode : The ACL link to the slave is put on hold. SCO links are still supported. Frees capacity for inquiry, paging, participation in another piconet. Park Mode : The slave gives up its active member address. But remains synchronized (beacon channel). Listens to broadcasts. Most power efficient.

Intra-piconet communication
The master controls all traffic on the piconet
SCO link - reservation The master allocates capacity for SCO links by reserving slots in pairs. ACL link polling scheme The slave transmits in the slave-to-master slot only when it has been addressed by its MAC address in the previous master-toslave slot. Therefore no collisions.

Device Addressing
Bluetooth Device Address (BD_ADDR) unique 48 bit address Active Member Address (AM_ADDR) - 3 bit address to identify active slave in a piconet - MAC address of Bluetooth device - all 0 is broadcast address Parked Member Address (PM_ADDR) - 8 bit parked slave address

Why Scatternets
A group of overlapping piconets is called a scatternet
Users in a piconet share a 1 Mbps channel individual throughput decreases drastically as more units are added The aggregate and individual throughput of users in a scatternet is much greater than when each user participates on the same piconet Collisions do occur when 2 piconets use the same 1 MHz hop channel simultaneously. As the number of piconets increases, the performance degrades gracefully

Inter-piconet communication
A unit may particpate in more than one piconet on a TDM basis. To participate on a piconet it needs the masters identity and the clock offset. While leaving the piconet it informs the master The master can also multiplex as slave on another piconet. But all traffic in its piconet will suspended in its absence.

Architecture Overview
Link Manager L2CAP SDP and RFCOMM

System Architecture
Applications
SDP IP RFCOMM

Data
Audio L2CAP Link Manager

Baseband RF
Bluetooth Protocol Stack

The Radio, Baseband and Link Manager are on firmware. The higher layers could be in software. The interface is then through the Host Controller (firmware and driver) The HCI interfaces defined for Bluetooth are UART, RS232 and USB.

Link Manager
LMP (Link Manager Protocol) basically consists of a number of PDUs sent in the baseband payload. LMP packets can be recognised by the L_CH field in the baseband header. Link Manager handles - Piconet management (attach/detach slaves, masterslave switch) - Link Configuration (low power modes, QoS, packet type selection) - Security

L2CAP
Logical link and adaptation protocol Only ACL links Concept of L2CAP channels and Channel ids analogous to sockets in TCP/IP

Functions
Protocol multiplexing

Segmentation and reassembly

QoS specifications Signalling channel for connection request, config etc

Higher layers
SDP
Service Discovery Protocol runs on a client server model. Each device runs only one SDP server and one client may be run for each application.

RFCOMM
Transport protocol providing serial data transfer

References

References
Jaap Haarsten, Bluetooth The universal radio interface for ad-hoc wireless connectivity, Ericsson Review, no. 3, 1998. www.ericsson.se/review Palowireless www.palowireless.com/infotooth/tutorial Aman Kansal, Connection Establishment in Bluetooth The official bluetooth site - www.bluetooth.com http://opensource.nus.edu.sg/projects/bluetooth/