Bluetooth

1. Bluetooth technology aims at so-called ad-hoc piconets, which are local area
networks with a very limited coverage ( about 10m ) and without the need for an
infrastructure.

2. Like IEEE 802.11b, Bluetooth operates in the 2.4 GHz ISM band. However,
MAC, physical layer and the offered services are completely different.

3. Bluetooth operates on 79 channels in the 2.4 GHz band with 1 MHz carrier
spacing. Each device performs frequency hopping with 1,600 hops/s in a pseudo
random fashion. Bluetooth applies FHSS for interference mitigation (and FH-
CDMA for separation of networks).

4. A piconet is a collection of Bluetooth devices which are synchronized to the

same hopping sequence. Figure shows a collection of devices with different roles.

Fig: Simple bluetooth pionet

5. One device in the piconet can act as master (M), all other devices connected to
the master must act as slaves (S). The master determines the hopping pattern in
the piconet and the slaves have to synchronize to this pattern.

6. Two additional types of devices are shown: parked devices (P) can not actively
participate in the piconet, but are known and can be reactivated with in some
milliseconds. Devices in stand-by (SB) do not participate in the piconet.

7. As more users join the piconet, the throughput per user drops quickly (a single
piconet offers less than 1 Mbit/s gross data rate). This led to the idea of forming
groups of piconets called scatternet.

Fig: Bluetooth Scatternet

8. In the example, the scatternet consists of two piconets, in which one device
participates in two different piconets. Both piconets use a different hopping
 sequence, always determined by the master of the piconet. Bluetooth applies FH-
CDMA for separation of piconets.

9. The core protocols of Bluetooth comprise the following elements:

• Radio: Specification of the air interface, i.e., frequencies, modulation, and

transmit power.

• Baseband: Description of basic connection establishment, packet formats, timing,

and basic QoS parameters.

• Link manager protocol: Link set-up and management between devices including
security functions and parameter negotiation.

• Logical link control and adaptation protocol (L2CAP): Adaptation of higher

layers to the baseband (connectionless and connection-oriented services).

• Service discovery protocol: Device discovery in close proximity plus querying

of service characteristics.

10.Bluetooth transceivers use Gaussian FSK for modulation and are available in
three classes:

• Power class 1: Maximum power is 100 mW and minimum is 1 mW (typ. 100 m

range with out obstacles). Power control is mandatory.

• Power class 2: Maximum power is 2.5 mW, nominal p ower is 1 mW, and
minimum power is 0.25 mW (typ. 10 m range without obstacles). Power control is
optional.

• Power class 3: Maximum power is 1 mW.

11.To save battery power, a Bluetooth device can go into one of three low power
states:

• Sniff state: The sniff state has the highest power consumption of the low power
states. Here, the device listens to the piconet at a reduced rate.

• Hold state: The device does not release its AMA but stops ACL transmission. A
slave may still exchange SCO packets.

• Park state: In this state the device has the lowest duty cycle and the lowest power
consumption. The device releases its AMA and receives a parked member address
(PMA).

12.The security features included in Bluetooth only help to set up a local domain of
trust between devices.The security algorithms use the public identity of a device,
a secret private user key, and an internally generated random key as input
parameters.