Showing papers on "Bluetooth published in 2013"

Power consumption analysis of Bluetooth Low Energy, ZigBee and ANT sensor nodes in a cyclic sleep scenario

Abstract: This paper is intended to guide developers of wireless systems who are puzzled by the vast number of radio configuration parameters and options. We provide experimental data comparing power consumption of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), ZigBee and ANT protocols for a cyclic sleep scenario, in which a short-range and low-power wireless sensor node periodically sends a data packet to a remote `hub' with intervening sleep intervals. Devices such as wearable health monitors often use this scenario when interfacing with a mobile phone-based hub. For all measured sleep intervals BLE achieved lower power consumption (10.1 uA, 3.3 V supply at 120 s interval), compared with ZigBee (15.7 uA), and ANT (28.2 uA). Most of the power consumption differences can be attributed to the time taken for a node to connect to the hub after waking up and the use of sleep between individual RF packets. For the three protocols we determined a sleep interval at which the tradeoff between power consumption and data rate is optimized.

Bluetooth positioning using RSSI and triangulation methods

Abstract: Location based services are the hottest applications on mobile devices nowadays and the growth is continuing. Indoor wireless positioning is the key technology to enable location based services to work well indoors, where GPS normally could not work. Bluetooth has been widely used in mobile devices like phone, PAD etc. therefore Bluetooth based indoor positioning has great market potential. Radio Signal Strength (RSS) is a key parameter for wireless positioning. New Bluetooth standard (since version 2.1) enables RSS to be discovered without time consuming pre-connection. In this research, general wireless positioning technologies are firstly analysed. Then RSS based Bluetooth positioning using the new feature is studied. The mathematical model is established to analyse the relation between RSS and the distance between two Bluetooth devices. Three distance-based algorithms are used for Bluetooth positioning: Least Square Estimation, Three-border and Centroid Method. Comparison results are analysed and the ways to improve the positioning accuracy are discussed.

Bluetooth: with low energy comes low security

Abstract: We discuss our tools and techniques to monitor and inject packets in Bluetooth Low Energy. Also known as BTLE or Bluetooth Smart, it is found in recent high-end smartphones, sports devices, sensors, and will soon appear in many medical devices. We show that we can effectively render useless the encryption of any Bluetooth Low Energy link.

Battery life of portable electronic devices

Abstract: The present disclosure provides a method for improving battery life of electronic devices such as Bluetooth headsets, smart-watches among others running on small batteries, for example coin batteries The method may include wireless power transmission through suitable techniques such as pocket-forming, while including receivers and capacitors in the aforementioned devices Wirelessly charged capacitors may provide sufficient power on which devices may run, and thus, battery life of such electronic devices may be enhanced

Near field Communication

Abstract: Near Field Communication (NFC) technology is being grown up at enormous speed. NFC technology provides the fastest way to communicate two devices with in a fraction of second. This technology has only been implemented on smart phones so far. Like Bluetooth it works only in short range and data transfer takes place at very low speed. Several security issues are attached with NFC, which is a big concern. Security attacks like eavesdropping, data corruption and modification, interference attacks and theft, are the most dangerous for the customer who is using his/her smart phone for payment purpose. In this paper we present the comparison of NFC with Bluetooth and security analysis of NFC.

SignalSLAM: Simultaneous localization and mapping with mixed WiFi, Bluetooth, LTE and magnetic signals

Abstract: Indoor localization typically relies on measuring a collection of RF signals, such as Received Signal Strength (RSS) from WiFi, in conjunction with spatial maps of signal fingerprints. A new technology for localization could arise with the use of 4G LTE telephony small cells, with limited range but with rich signal strength information, namely Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP). In this paper, we propose to combine an ensemble of available sources of RF signals to build multi-modal signal maps that can be used for localization or for network deployment optimization. We primarily rely on Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), which provides a solution to the challenge of building a map of observations without knowing the location of the observer. SLAM has recently been extended to incorporate signal strength from WiFi in the so-called WiFi-SLAM. In parallel to WiFi-SLAM, other localization algorithms have been developed that exploit the inertial motion sensors and a known map of either WiFi RSS or of magnetic field magnitude. In our study, we use all the measurements that can be acquired by an off-the-shelf smartphone and crowd-source the data collection from several experimenters walking freely through a building, collecting time-stamped WiFi and Bluetooth RSS, 4G LTE RSRP, magnetic field magnitude, GPS reference points when outdoors, Near-Field Communication (NFC) readings at specific landmarks and pedestrian dead reckoning based on inertial data. We resolve the location of all the users using a modified version of Graph-SLAM optimization of the users poses with a collection of absolute location and pairwise constraints that incorporates multi-modal signal similarity. We demonstrate that we can recover the user positions and thus simultaneously generate dense signal maps for each WiFi access point and 4G LTE small cell, “from the pocket”. Finally, we demonstrate the localization performance using selected single modalities, such as only WiFi and the WiFi signal maps that we generated.

Survey on security threats and protection mechanisms in embedded automotive networks

Abstract: Embedded electronic components, so-called ECU (Electronic Controls Units), are nowadays a prominent part of a car's architecture. These ECUs, monitoring and controlling the different subsystems of a car, are interconnected through several gateways and compose the global internal network of the car. Moreover, modern cars are now able to communicate with other devices through wired or wireless interfaces such as USB, Bluetooth, WiFi or even 3G. Such interfaces may expose the internal network to the outside world and can be seen as entry points for cyber attacks. In this paper, we present a survey on security threats and protection mechanisms in embedded automotive networks. After introducing the different protocols being used in the embedded networks of current vehicles, we then analyze the potential threats targeting these networks and describe how the attackers' opportunities can be enhanced by the new communication abilities of modern cars. Finally, we present the security solutions currently being devised to address these problems.

Internet-of-things and android system based intelligent home system and control method

Abstract: The invention discloses an internet-of-things and android system based intelligent home system which comprises a control host and a plurality of terminal devices. The control host is provided with a high-performance arm processor, a touch screen and an android operation system, supports zigbee, blueTooth, wifi (wireless fidelity), 3G (the third generation) communication, is provided with a built-in web server and a built-in database, has functions of display, operation, control data storage, server, energy management, and particularly has functions of automatic control, hand-operated control, voice control and remote control. The terminal devices include a sensor terminal, a security terminal and a control terminal, are provided with independent processors and network addresses, have functions of data acquisition, data transmission, instruction receiving, transmitting and processing and IO (input/output) control, and support one or multiple wireless communication manners of zigbee, blueTooth, wifi and 3G.

Bluetooth based collaborative crowd density estimation with mobile phones

Abstract: We present a technique for estimating crowd density by using a mobile phone to scan the environment for Bluetooth devices. The paper builds on previous work directed to use Bluetooth scans to analyze social context and extends it with more advanced features, leveraging collaboration between close by devices, and the use of relative features that do not directly depend on the absolute number of devices in the environment. The method is evaluated on a data set from an experiment at the public viewing event in Kaiserslautern during the European soccer championship showing over 75% recognition accuracy on seven discrete classes.

A 1.9nJ/b 2.4GHz multistandard (Bluetooth Low Energy/Zigbee/IEEE802.15.6) transceiver for personal/body-area networks

Abstract: This paper presents a multistandard ultra-low-power (ULP) 2.36/2.4GHz transceiver for personal and body-area networks (PAN/BAN). The presented radio complies with 3 short-range standards: Bluetooth Low Energy (BT-LE), IEEE802.15.4 (ZigBee) and IEEE802.15.6 (Medical Body-Area Networks, MBAN). A proprietary 2Mb/s mode is also implemented to support data-streaming applications like hearing aids. Current short-range radios for Zigbee and BT-LE typically consume more than 20mW DC power, which is rather high for autonomous systems with limited battery energy. The dual-mode MBAN/BT-LE transceiver achieves a power consumption of 6.5mW for the RX and 5.9mW for the TX by employing a sliding-IF RX and a polar TX architecture. However, it suffers from limited RX image rejection and needs a PA operating at a higher supply voltage. In this paper, an energy-efficient radio architecture with a suitable LO frequency plan is selected, and several efficiency-enhancement techniques for the critical RF circuits (e.g., a push-pull mixer and a digitally-assisted PA) are utilized. As a result, the presented transceiver dissipates only 3.8mW (RX) and 4.6mW (TX) DC power from a 1.2V supply, while exceeding all of the PHY requirements of above 3 standards.

On Power and Throughput Tradeoffs of WiFi and Bluetooth in Smartphones

Abstract: This paper describes a combined power and throughput performance study of WiFi and Bluetooth usage in smartphones The work measures the obtained throughput in various settings while employing each of these technologies, and the power consumption level associated with them In addition, the power requirements of Bluetooth and WiFi in their respective noncommunicating modes are also compared The study reveals several interesting phenomena and tradeoffs In particular, the paper identifies many situations in which WiFi is superior to Bluetooth, countering previous reports The study also identifies a couple of scenarios that are better handled by Bluetooth The conclusions from this study suggest preferred usage patterns, as well as operative suggestions for researchers and smartphone developers This includes a cross-layer optimization for TCP/IP that could greatly improve the throughput to power ratio whenever the transmitter is more capable than the receiver

Bayesian Fusion for Indoor Positioning Using Bluetooth Fingerprints

Abstract: This paper studies the use of received signal strength indicators (RSSI) applied to fingerprinting method in a Bluetooth network for indoor positioning. A Bayesian fusion (BF) method is proposed to combine the statistical information from the RSSI measurements and the prior information from a motion model. Indoor field tests are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the method. Test results show that the proposed BF algorithm achieves a horizontal positioning accuracy of about 4.7 m on the average, which is about 6 and 7 % improvement when compared with Bayesian static estimation and a point Kalman filter method, respectively.

A localization method for the Internet of Things

Abstract: Many localization algorithms and systems have been developed by means of wireless sensor networks for both indoor and outdoor environments. To achieve higher localization accuracy, extra hardware equipments are utilized by most of the existing localization solutions, which increase the cost and considerably limit the location-based applications. The Internet of Things (IOT) integrates many technologies, such as Internet, Zigbee, Bluetooth, infrared, WiFi, GPRS, 3G, etc., which can enable different ways to obtain the location information of various objects. Location-based service is a primary service of the IOT, while localization accuracy is a key issue. In this paper, a higher accuracy localization scheme is proposed which can effectively satisfy diverse requirements for many indoor and outdoor location services. The proposed scheme composes of two phases: (1) the partition phase, in which the target region is split into small grids; (2) the localization refinement phase, in which a higher accuracy of localization can be obtained by applying an algorithm designed in the paper. A trial system is set up to verify correctness of the proposed scheme and furthermore to illustrate its feasibility and availability. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme can improve the localization accuracy.

SoNIC: classifying interference in 802.15.4 sensor networks

Abstract: Sensor networks that operate in the unlicensed 2.4~GHz frequency band suffer cross-technology radio interference from a variety of devices, e.g., Bluetooth headsets, laptops using WiFi, or microwave ovens. Such interference has been shown to significantly degrade network performance. We present SoNIC, a system that enables resource-limited sensor nodes to detect the type of interference they are exposed to and select an appropriate mitigation strategy. The key insight underlying SoNIC is that different interferers disrupt individual 802.15.4 packets in characteristic ways that can be detected by sensor nodes. In contrast to existing approaches to interference detection, SoNIC does not rely on active spectrum sampling or additional hardware, making it lightweight and energy-efficient.In an office environment with multiple interferers, a sensor node running SoNIC correctly detects the predominant interferer 87% of the time. To show how sensor networks can benefit from SoNIC, we add it to a mobile sink application to improve the application's packet reception ratio under interference.

User Identification and Location Determination in Control Applications

Abstract: A system in which a portable electronic device communicates with an external device to determine a location. Upon determining its location, the portable electronic device transmits this information as well as identifying information to a control processor. The control processor controls one or more controllable devices according to the location and identifying information. The portable electronic device may determine the location via NFC tag or via one or more RF beacons transmitting information according to the Bluetooth 4.0 protocol.

Fundamental understanding on the use of Bluetooth scanner as a complementary transport data

Abstract: Literature is limited in its knowledge of the Bluetooth protocol based data acquisition process and in the accuracy and reliability of the analysis performed using the data. This paper extends the body of knowledge surrounding the use of data from the Bluetooth Media Access Control Scanner (BMS) as a complementary traffic data source. A multi-layer simulation model named Traffic and Communication Simulation (TCS) is developed. TCS is utilised to model the theoretical properties of the BMS data and analyse the accuracy and reliability of travel time estimation using the BMS data.

Modeling and Restraining Mobile Virus Propagation

Abstract: Viruses and malwares can spread from computer networks into mobile networks with the rapid growth of smart cellphone users. In a mobile network, viruses and malwares can cause privacy data leakage, extra charges, and remote listening. Furthermore, they can jam wireless servers by sending thousands of spam messages or track user positions through GPS. Because of the potential damages of mobile viruses, it is important for us to gain a deep understanding of the propagation mechanisms of mobile viruses. In this paper, we propose a two-layer network model for simulating virus propagation through both Bluetooth and SMS. Different from previous work, our work addresses the impacts of human behaviors, i.e., operational behavior and mobile behavior, on virus propagation. Our simulation results provide further insights into the determining factors of virus propagation in mobile networks. Moreover, we examine two strategies for restraining mobile virus propagation, i.e., preimmunization and adaptive dissemination strategies drawing on the methodology of autonomy-oriented computing (AOC). The experimental results show that our strategies can effectively protect large-scale and/or highly dynamic mobile networks.

Bluetooth Remote Home Automation System Using Android Application

Abstract: This paper presents the overall design of Home Automation System (HAS) with low cost and wireless remote control. This system is designed to assist and provide support in order to fulfill the needs of elderly and disabled in home. Also, the smart home concept in the system improves the standard living at home. The main control system implements wireless Bluetooth technology to provide remote access from PC/laptop or smart phone. The design remains the existing electrical switches and provides more safety control on the switches with low voltage activating method. The switches status is synchronized in all the control system whereby every user interface indicates the real time existing switches status. The system intended to control electrical appliances and devices in house with relatively low cost design, user-friendly interface and ease of installation.

Smart home system using android application

Abstract: This paper presents the overall design of Home Automation System (HAS) with low cost and wireless remote control. This system is designed to assist and provide support in order to fulfil the needs of elderly and disabled in home. Also, the smart home concept in the system improves the standard living at home. The main control system implements wireless Bluetooth technology to provide remote access from PC/laptop or smart phone. The design remains the existing electrical switches and provides more safety control on the switches with low voltage activating method. The switches status is synchronized in all the control system whereby every user interface indicates the real time existing switches status. The system intended to control electrical appliances and devices in house with relatively low cost design, user-friendly interface and ease of installation.

Method and device for internet of things of intelligent home

Abstract: Disclosed are a method and a device for an internet of things of an intelligent home. The method and the device are characterized in that data information of devices and sensors of the intelligent home is wireless connected into an intranet, namely, a local area network of the intelligent home, the devices and the sensors of the intelligent home include household electrical appliances embedded in a ZigBee module, the household electrical appliances include an air conditioner, a central air conditioning system, a combustible gas leakage detector, an intelligent access control video system, an intelligent old and young person living safety video system, an intelligent garage video system, a resource and power main switch system and an intelligent building and environment monitoring device, wireless connection is implemented via WIFI (wireless fidelity), a Bluetooth technology and 38ZigBee, information and data are transmitted into a control center of an intelligent home expert system via a residential gateway, and the control center comprises an intelligent computer center and a cloud computing center, is connected with the internet, computes and processes the data, transmits intelligent instructions and information to an executing mechanism of the intelligent home after the data are intelligently processed, commands and controls the executing mechanism, and performs emergency processing, so that the intelligent home is realized.

Hybrid Indoor Positioning with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth: Architecture and Performance

Abstract: Reliable indoor positioning is an important foundation for emerging indoor location based services. Most existing indoor positioning proposals rely on a single wireless technology, e.g., Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or RFID. A hybrid positioning system combines such technologies and achieves better positioning accuracy by exploiting the different capabilities of the different technologies. In a hybrid system based on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, the former works as the main infrastructure to enable fingerprint based positioning, while the latter (via hotspot devices) partitions the indoor space as well as a large Wi-Fi radio map. As a result, the Wi-Fi based online position estimation is improved in a divide-and-conquer manner. We study three aspects of such a hybrid indoor positioning system. First, to avoid large positioning errors caused by similar reference positions that are hard to distinguish, we design a deployment algorithm that identifies and separates such positions into different smaller radio maps by deploying Bluetooth hotspots at particular positions. Second, we design methods that improve the partition switching that occurs when a user leaves the detection range of a Bluetooth hotspot. Third, we propose three architectural options for placement of the computation workload. We evaluate all proposals using both simulation and walkthrough experiments in two indoor environments of different sizes. The results show that our proposals are effective and efficient in achieving very good indoor positioning performance.

Wireless Device Pairing

Abstract: A wireless communication network includes a communication source device, such as a Bluetooth digital music player and a communication destination device, such as a Bluetooth headphone or speaker device. The communication source device is configured to transmit audio signals, such as encoded electrical signals in the audio frequency band, to the communication destination device via a wireless or wired audio communication channel. Upon receiving the audio signal, the communication destination device is configured to uniquely identify the communication source device and subsequently enter a discoverable mode to establish a wireless communication channel with the source device, such as via Bluetooth pairing. With such a configuration, the wireless communication channel connection process can be automated requiring little to no user action on either the source or destination device to accomplish the wireless pairing process.

Toward Privacy Preserving and Collusion Resistance in a Location Proof Updating System

Abstract: Today's location-sensitive service relies on user's mobile device to determine the current location. This allows malicious users to access a restricted resource or provide bogus alibis by cheating on their locations. To address this issue, we propose A Privacy-Preserving LocAtion proof Updating System (APPLAUS) in which colocated Bluetooth enabled mobile devices mutually generate location proofs and send updates to a location proof server. Periodically changed pseudonyms are used by the mobile devices to protect source location privacy from each other, and from the untrusted location proof server. We also develop user-centric location privacy model in which individual users evaluate their location privacy levels and decide whether and when to accept the location proof requests. In order to defend against colluding attacks, we also present betweenness ranking-based and correlation clustering-based approaches for outlier detection. APPLAUS can be implemented with existing network infrastructure, and can be easily deployed in Bluetooth enabled mobile devices with little computation or power cost. Extensive experimental results show that APPLAUS can effectively provide location proofs, significantly preserve the source location privacy, and effectively detect colluding attacks.

Energy Analysis of Device Discovery for Bluetooth Low Energy

Abstract: Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is drawing more and more attention due to its recent appearance in consumer electronic products. As a low-power wireless solution, BLE provides attractive energy performance that makes it particularly suitable for portable, battery-driven electronic devices. Although there are some prior arts focusing on BLE energy performance, it still lacks a thorough study on the important aspect of device discovery. Such energy cost, introduced by intermittent scanning or connection setup, could seriously affect the battery endurance ability of the devices. In this paper, we present quantitative analysis on the neighbor discovery energy for BLE. The modeling results that built upon measurement of CC2541 Mini-Development Kit have been validated quite accurate via extensive experiments. In addition, several interesting conclusions are found while investigating the achieved energy model, which may provide precious guidelines to the design of energy-efficient applications for BLE.

Fundamental understanding on the use of Bluetooth scanner as a complementary transport data

Abstract: Literature is limited in its knowledge of the Bluetooth protocol based data acquisition process and in the accuracy and reliability of the analysis performed using the data. This paper extends the body of knowledge surrounding the use of data from the Bluetooth Media Access Control Scanner (BMS) as a complementary traffic data source. A multi layer simulation model named Traffic and Communication Simulation (TCS) is developed. TCS is utilised to model the theoretical properties of the BMS data and analyse the accuracy and reliability of travel time estimation using the BMS data.

Human interaction discovery in smartphone proximity networks

Abstract: Since humans are fundamentally social beings and interact frequently with others in their daily life, understanding social context is of primary importance in building context-aware applications. In this paper, using smartphone Bluetooth as a proximity sensor to create social networks, we present a probabilistic approach to mine human interaction types in real life. Our analysis is conducted on Bluetooth data continuously sensed with smartphones for over one year from 40 individuals who are professionally or personally related. The results show that the model can automatically discover a variety of social contexts. We objectively validated our model by studying its predictive and retrieval performance.

Spartacus: spatially-aware interaction for mobile devices through energy-efficient audio sensing

Abstract: Recent developments in ubiquitous computing enable applications that leverage personal mobile devices, such as smartphones, as a means to interact with other devices in their close proximity. In this paper, we propose Spartacus, a mobile system that enables spatially-aware neighboring device interactions with zero prior configuration. Using built-in microphones and speakers on commodity mobile devices, Spartacus uses a novel acoustic technique based on the Doppler effect to enable users to accurately initiate an interaction with a neighboring device through a pointing gesture. To enable truly spontaneous interactions on energy-constrained mobile devices, Spartacus uses a continuous audio-based lower-power listening mechanism to trigger the gesture detection service. This eliminates the need for any manual action by the user. Experimental results show that Spartacus achieves an average 90% device selection accuracy within 3m for most interaction scenarios. Our energy consumption evaluations show that, Spartacus achieves about 4X lower energy consumption than WiFi Direct and 5.5X lower than the latest Bluetooth 4.0 protocols.

Bluetooth apparatus with ultra-low standby power consumption and implementation method thereof

Abstract: The present invention provides a Bluetooth apparatus with ultra-low standby power consumption and an implementation method thereof. The Bluetooth apparatus comprises a main body and a switch apparatus. A control circuit is arranged in the main body, and the control circuit comprises a Bluetooth module, a low-level-triggered ultra-low power consumption switch module and a high-level-triggered reset switch module. The low-level-triggered ultra-low power consumption switch module is connected to a deep sleep control pin of the Bluetooth module, and the high-level-triggered reset switch module is connected to an ON/OFF end of the Bluetooth module. A switching apparatus controls the low-level-triggered ultra-low power consumption switch module and the high-level-triggered reset switch module to work. According to the present invention, when a 50 mAh battery is used on a Bluetooth headset, the standby current is 0.5 uA, and theoretical standby time can reach 2500 hours, which is amounted to 104 days. When the novel technology is used on the Bluetooth headset, standby time can increase from 4 days to 104 days, with an increase of 100 days of standby time, which greatly reduces charging frequency and improves convenience in use.

A 1.1-mW-RX ${-}{\hbox{81.4}}$ -dBm Sensitivity CMOS Transceiver for Bluetooth Low Energy

Abstract: This paper presents a fully integrated low-power 130-nm CMOS transceiver tailored to the Bluetooth low energy (BLE) standard. The receiver employs a passive front-end zero-IF architecture, which is directly driven by a quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator (QVCO) without any buffering stage. The QVCO, embedded in a fractional- $N$ phase-locked loop (PLL), employs a passive $RC$ network to cancel the parasitic magnetic coupling between the two cores so as to keep the quadrature phase error below 1.5 $^{\circ}$ . The PLL exhibits a high loop bandwidth of 1 MHz to sufficiently reduce the frequency pulling effects due to close-by interferers. The transmitter uses a direct-modulation Gaussian frequency-shift keying scheme in which small PMOS-based cells modulate the output signal of one of the cores of the QVCO. In the baseband section, the transceiver employs a 4-bit phase-domain ADC based on novel linear-combiner topology to generate the required phase rotations. The proposed combiner operates in current domain and does not employ resistors, leading to a power- and area-efficient demodulator implementation. The complete receiver achieves a sensitivity of ${-}$ 81.4 dBm and fulfills the BLE requirements on interference blocking. It consumes 1.1 mW from a 1.0-V supply and has a similar power efficiency as recent super-regenerative receivers that are much more susceptible to interferers. The transmitter delivers 1.6-dBm output power to a differential 100 $\Omega$ and consumes 5.9 mW, which implies a total efficiency of 24.5%.