IEEE 802.15.

1-2002

(Bluetooth)
 History

In 1990s, Intel started a program called
Business RF, Ericsson MC-link, Nokia – Low
Power RF.
 Hence, there was a need of standardisation to
avoid fragmentation of technologies. (Low power
Short Range RF Communication)

In 1998 five companies (Ericsson, Intel, IBM,
Nokia & Toshiba) founded Bluetooth
Consortium with the goal of developing single
chip, low cost radio based wireless network
technology.
 Bluetooth
 Proposed standard must be able to:
 Recognize any other Bluetooth device in
radio range
 Permit easy connection of these devices
 Be aware of the device types
 Support service discovery
 Support connectivity aware applications
 Word Origin

The name of this technology is borrowed from king
of Denmark Harald known as Harald “Blatand”.

Harald is a German and Scandinavian name of Germanic
origin.

Harald means “leader of the army”.

Blatand was his nickname which literally translates
into English as Bluetooth.

The king has the glory of uniting Scandinavian
countries Norway, Denmark & Sweden and
bringing Christianity to Scandinavia. (Uniter)
 Bluetooth
 Bluetooth radio modules operate in the unlicensed
ISM band centered at at 2.45GHz. RF
channels:2420+k MHZ, k=0..78.
 Bluetooth devices within 10m of each other can
share up to 720kbps of capacity
 Can operate on both circuit and packet switching
modes, providing both synchronous and
asynchronous data services
 It is intended to support an open-ended list of
applications, including data, audio, graphics and
even video.
 Bluetooth Architecture
 Up to 8 devices can communicate in a small network, called
piconet. 10 piconets can coexist in the same coverage
range of the Bluetooth radio.
 Each piconet has 1 MASTER and the rest serve as
SLAVES. SLAVES within a piconet only have links to the
MASTER.
 Multi-hop communication is obtained thru the scatternet.
 Slaves
• In addition to the active slave devices, many
more slaves can remain locked to the master
• These devices are called to be in parked
state or park mode
– Such slave devices cannot be active on the
channel, but remain synchronized to the master.
 Slaves
• Master device controls the piconet including
channel access by the slaves
– Periodically polls slave devices to find whether
they need to transmit any asynchronous data
• A frequency-hopping channel based on the
address of the master defines each piconet
• All devices of a piconet are synchronized to
the frequency-hopping channel for the
piconet
• The transmissions in a piconet are decided
on the basis of time division duplexing (TDD)
 Baseband
• Enables RF to form a piconet - physical
channel shared among several devices
– Up to 7 slaves can be connected to 1 master
• Provides 2 different kind of physical links,
with their corresponding packets
– Synchronous Connection-Oriented (SCO)
– Asynchronous Connection-Less (ACL)
 SCO Links
• SCO link is a point-to-point link between a master
and a single slave transmitting at 64 kbps
• SCO links are used to carry delay-sensitive traffic
like real-time voice traffic using reserved bandwidth
as well data
– Voice packets are never retransmitted
– Master maintains the SCO link by using reserved slots
periodically
– Master node can support up to three SCO links to the
same or more slaves
– A Slave node can support up to three SCO links from the
same master node or two SCO links if the links originate
from different masters
 ACL Links
• This channel is a point-to-multipoint link between the
master node and all the slaves
– Provides an asynchronous access between the master
and a slave
– Support elastic traffic like computer data with variable bit
rate or on the best-effort basis
– Master device can establish an ACL link to any slave
node on a per-slot basis (any slave using polling)
• Whenever SCO channel is not used the entire
bandwidth is allocated to ACL channel.
• To ensure data integrity, retransmission is allowed in
ACL links.
• Between a master node and a slave node only a
single ACL link can exist.
 ACL Links

Provides a packet-switched connection between
the master node and all active slaves participating
in the piconet.
 Both symmetric and asymmetric traffic are supported
by ACL.
 Broadcast messages are also supported by ACL links.

The master device controls the bandwidth of the
ACL link and connects with maximum seven slave
devices to form a Piconet.
 ACL links can reach a maximum data rates of 57.6
Kbps in downlink and 721 bps in uplink.
 Packets are delivered on best – effort basis, i.e., no
guarantees are given for data transmission.
 In Brief

SCO is for real-time narrow band signal which
does not require retransmission.

Example voice in Bluetooth handsfree

ACL is for all other BT data transfer including
High quality audio/video data.

Example Music playback through A2DP. This is high
bandwidth data and hence called "Advanced Audio".

SCO is fixed bandwidth channels and can have
maximum 3 channels per device, but
throughput of ACL varies with other active
connections (SCO and ACL) at that time.
Protocol stack
 Link Manager Protocol (LMP)
• Responsible for link set-up between devices,
including security functions :
– Authentication
– Encryption
• Controls and negotiates baseband packet size
• Controls power modes and connection states
 Host Controller Interface (HCI)

• Uniform interface method of accessing the

Bluetooth controller capabilities
• Allows the software stack on the host
processor to communicate with Bluetooth
hardware
• Not used for communicating among
devices
 Logical Link Control and Adaptation
Protocol (L2CAP)
• Its role is to adapt upper protocols over the
• Baseband :
– Multiplexing capability
– Segmentation and reassembly operations
• Permits to transmit and receive upper layer
data packets up to 64kB in length
• Also permits per-channel flow control and
retransmission
 Service Discovery Protocol (SDP)
• Provides a means for a Bluetooth device to
discover what services of another device are
available and determine the characteristics of
those available services
• Client-Server interaction
• Service records (database) provide a list of
services and associated attributes
 States/Substates/Modes (1)
• 3 states: STANDBY, CONNECTION, PARK
• 7 substates: page, page scan, inquiry, inquiry scan,
master response, slave response, inquiry Response
• 3 modes in CONNECTION state : Active, Sniff, Hold
– Frequency Hop Synchronization (FHS) packet is a special
control packet used to convey the Bluetooth device
address (48 bits) and the clock of the sender.
– Used in page master response, inquiry response and in
master slave switch
– Used for frequency hop synchronization before the piconet
channel has been established, or when an existing piconet
changes to a new piconet.
States/Substates/Modes (2)
States/Substates/Modes
 BT Packet Format
• There are three fields – access code, header and
payload.
• The access code and header are of fixed size: 72 bits
and 54 bits, respectively.
• The payload can range from zero to a maximum of
2745 bits.
• The header is repeated three times to make 54 bits
LSB 72 54 0 – 2745 MSB
ACCESS HEADER PAYLOAD
CODE

LSB 3 4 1 1 1 8 MSB

AM_ADDR TYPE FLOW ARQN SEQN HEC

 BT Packet Types
• For each of SCO and ACL links a total of 12
different packet types can be defined
• Four control packets are common to all link types
• SCO packets do not include a CRC as they do not
need it.
• Information carried by ACL packets can be either
user data or control data
• Seven types of ACL packets defined for data
transmission and classified according to the time
slots they occupy
– Three Data Medium rate (DM), three Data High rate
(DH), and one AUX1.
 Packet Types (Contd.)
• Payload field has two different fields – voice field
(synchronous) & data field (asynchronous)
• ACL packets only have the data field and SCO
packets only have the voice field with the
exception of the DV (Data + Voice) SCO packets,
which have both
– There are three high quality voice packets – HV1,
HV2, and HV3 with 10, 20 and 30 information bytes
respectively
• Voice field has a fixed length of 240 bits for HV
packets and 80 bits for DV packets
• No payload header is present in HV packets.
 Access Codes
• Each packet is transmitted with a particular
channel access code followed by the header
• A packet may or may not have a header
• If a packet header follows, the access code
is 72 bits long; otherwise the access code is
68 bits long
– Access code is used for synchronization, DC
offset compensation and identification
– Identifies all packets exchanged on the channel
of that piconet
– Three different types of access codes defined
 Operational States
Operational States A piconet

SB
Master S SB

Slave

Parked* M P

Standby* S

* Low power states S SB

S
 Forming a Piconet (1)
• Initially, devices know only about themselves
– No synchronization
– Everyone monitors in standby mode
– All devices have the capability of serving as
master or slave
N
F H
D
G P
O
E A
J B M
L
I K Q
C
 Forming a Piconet (2)
• Unit establishing the piconet automatically becomes
the master
– It sends an inquiry to discover what other devices are out
there
• Addressing
– Active devices are assigned a 3-bit active member address
(AMA)
– Parked devices are assigned an 8-bit parked member
address (PMA)
– Standby devices do not need an address
 Connection Establishment

INQUIRY PAGE CONNECTION

 States

standby disconnected
Typical = 2s
detach connecting
inquiry page

Typical = 0.6s

Transmit Connected active

AMA AMA

Typical = 2ms

Park Hold Sniff

PMA AMA AMA
low power

AMA = Active Member Address

PMA = Parked Member Address
 Connecting to a Piconet
• Device in standby listens
periodically
• If a device wants to establish a
standby
piconet, it sends an inquiry,
broadcast over all wake-up carriers
– It will become the master of inquiry page

the piconet
– If inquiry was successful, device Transmit
AMA
Connected
AMA
enters page mode
• Devices in standby may respond to
Park Hold Sniff
the inquiry with its device address PMA AMA AMA

– It will become a slave to that

master
 Page and Connect States
• After receiving a response from
devices, the master can connect to
each device individually standby
– An AMA is assigned
– Slaves synchronize to the inquiry page

hopping sequence established

by the master Transmit Connected
AMA AMA
• In active state, master and slaves
listen, transmit and receive
Park Hold Sniff
– A disconnect procedure allows PMA AMA AMA

devices to return to standby

mode
 Low Power States
• Sniff state
– Slaves listen to the piconet at a
reduced rate standby
– Master designates certain slots
to transmit to slaves in sniff state inquiry page
• Hold state
– Slave stops ACL transmission, but Transmit Connected
can exchange SCO packets AMA AMA

• Park state
– Slave releases its AMA Park
PMA
Hold
AMA
Sniff
AMA
– Still FH synchronized and wakes
up periodically to listen to
beacon
 Scatternets (1)
• Piconets with overlapping coverage use different
hopping sequences
– Collisions may occur when multiple piconets use the same
carrier frequency at the same time
• Devices can participate in multiple piconets
simultaneously, creating a scatternet
– A device can only be the master of one piconet at a time
– A device may serve as master in one piconet and slave in
another
– A device may serve as slave in multiple piconets
 Scatternets (2)
D
F H
G M N

A
B
O P
E K
J L
I
C Q
 Mixed Link Example
SCO ACL ACL SCO ACL SCO SCO ACL
MASTER

SLAVE 1

SLAVE 2

SLAVE 3
 Bluetooth Limitations
 Does not address routing, most network functions
are pushed into the link layer
 Does not support multi-hop multicasting
 Does not address how to cope with mobility !
 The MASTER node is the bottleneck
 No. of nodes in piconet is limited
 Does not address power-saving methods done at
upper layers, above the link-layer