Unambiguous Device Identification and Fast Connection Setup in Bluetooth

The paper addresses two problems of Bluetooth which arise in situations where a user device performs transactions with a specific server device out of a number of similar devices in the proximity, such as ticket machines or point-of-sales terminals. Firstly, the server that a connection should be set up with, needs to be uniquely identified and selected. Secondly, with the current Bluetooth protocol specifications the connection setup may take a prohibitively long time. The paper revisits the Bluetooth inquiry and page procedures and their duration. We discuss two ways of uniquely identifying the target device relying on manual user interaction, and compare the times needed for connection establishment. We further propose to use a second short-range communication medium, such as an integrated infrared interface or an RFID transponder, to facilitate the connection setup. This eliminates the need for manual selection of the target device and further speeds up the connection establishment.