Bluetooth Hotspot

[aruljothi]

  Bluetooth is an industrial specification for wireless personal area networks (PANs), also known as IEEE 802.15.1. Bluetooth provides a way to connect and exchange information between devices like personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, laptops, PCs, printers, digital cameras and video game consoles via a secure, globally unlicensed short-range radio frequency. Bluetooth is a radio standard and communications protocol primarily designed for low power consumption, with a short range (power class dependent: 1 meter, 10 meters, 100 meters) based around low-cost transceiver microchips in each device.

Wifi hotspots are very common now days. Laptops and PDAs use these hotspots to access the internet as these devices have Wifi facility built into it. But mobile phones do not have Wifi facility in them. Nokia is releasing some models with Wifi, but still those models are costly. But lower end models also come with Bluetooth now. So its a better idea to create a Bluetooth hotspot where Bluetooth mobiles can access the internet.

With this technology mobile phones need not have a GPRS connection or even a SIM card in it to access the internet. This project has two parts. A client application and a server application. The server application runs in a normal PC with Bluetooth dongle. This PC acts as the gateway to the internet for the mobile. The mobile will host the client application which will connect to the server application in a hotspot environment and provide the mobile with internet access.


The Bluetooth wireless technology serves as a replacement of the interconnecting cables between a variety of personal devices, including mobile phones. Its aim is to function as the universal low cost, user friendly, air interface that will replace the excess of proprietary cables that people needed to carry and use to connect their personal devices. It has become the technology of choice in cordless headsets for mobile phones, and is frequently used by mobile phone users to exchange files such as ring tones and images. It was found to be the most suitable wireless technology for this project, as it over the benefits of omni-directionality and the elimination of the line of sight requirement of RF-based connectivity.

Bluetooth creates a "personal connectivity space" which resembles a communications bubble that follows people around and empowers them to connect their personal devices with other devices that enter the bubble. Connectivity in this bubble is spontaneous and can involve several devices of diverse computing capabilities including reduced power devices such as mobile phones, unlike wireless LAN solutions that are designed for communication between devices of succinct computing power and battery capabilities.

Bluetooth is the term used to describe the protocol of a short range (10 meter) frequency-hopping radio link between devices. These devices are then termed Bluetooth - enabled. Documentation on Bluetooth is split into two sections, the Bluetooth Specification and Bluetooth Profiles.
· The Specification describes how the technology works (i.e. the Bluetooth protocol architecture),
· The Profiles describe how the technology is used (i.e. how different parts of the specification can be used to fulfill a desired function for a Bluetooth device)