Journal of Software Engineering and Applications, 2011, 4, 95-105
doi:10.4236/jsea.2011.42011 Published Online February 2011 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/jsea)
Copyright © 2011 SciRes. JSEA
95
Mobile Applications Provisioning Using Bluetooth
Wireless Technology
Thomas Djotio Ndie1, Claude Tangha2, Tam Sangbong3, Armstrong Formenah Kufor3
1LIRIMA, Management and Security of Network and System Services, University of Yaounde I, Yaounde, Cameroon; 2Department
of Computer Science, National Advanced School of Engineering, University of Yaounde I, Yaounde, Cameroon; 3Soft-Tech Interna-
tional Inc, Douala, Cameroon.
Email: {tdjotio, ctangha}@gmail.com, tam@soft - te c hint.com, kufamstrong@yahoo.com
Received January 4th, 2011; revised January 18th, 2011, accepted January 23rd, 2011.
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we propose a cheap means for propagating mobile application using Bluetooth, a convenient short range
wireless technology. Today, one of the main problems abou t mobile technolog y is about imp lemen ting automatica lly th e
software in the multip le and various type of phones devices, irrespective of the phone model (Nokia, Sam sung, iPhone,
etc.). There are many ways of doing OTA like by SMS. This approach allows providing an http download link by SMS
but, we are limited by the maximum size one can have to build an application and send it trough this means. This ap-
proach is also expensive because data sources are expensive. Within the context of mobile social networking and prox-
imity marketing, we come up with an original way of provisioning mobile applications using Bluetooth. We use anybody
who is already a subscriber of an application to become an ambassador of it. The application is self-replicating and
distributing in itself and sen ding back results. It ethically acts like a virus or a disease. A prototype is built to validate
the proposed methodolog y.
Keywords: Mobile Application, Application Provisioning, Bluetoo th, Mobile Social Network,
Application Auto-Replication
1. Introduction
We propose to Software Designing Companies in the
mobile application development field a short range pro-
visioning method of mobile application for advertisement,
proximity marketing and other motives for propagating
information independent of any exiting mobile operator
and model. Indeed, cost of information propagation, ad-
vertisements, sensitization and other purposes of propa-
gating information through information technology (IT)
has become a cause for concern for most organizations
and individual. Nowadays, these organizations and indi-
viduals mainly target other individuals (the clients) of
advertisement, mostly those in possession of at least a
mobile phone. Most commercial operators also make use
of the mobile operators’ services in order to advertise the
value-added services they offer to their customers. Like-
wise, application developers deploy their applications on
servers, allowing mobile customers to browse the web in
other to download them. Some of these information pro-
pagator media are somehow very costly, therefore affect-
ing most of these organizations. Minimizing the cost of
propagating information by most of these IT technologies
thus becomes a major cause for concern by most of these
organizations [1-3]. In both cases, the operators or the
mobile clie nt have to go t h ro u gh an expensive middle man
(Internet or mobile operators) irrespective of the distance
between transceivers. And also, most mobile phones do
not integrate discovery applications like web browsers,
GPRS etc. that allows for easy browsing and download-
ing of application.
The provisioning of mobile applications in the context
of today is very expensive as users have to purchase, and
then download them from the Internet which cost a lot of
time and hence money. Most mobile applications also
have a limited market due to their limitations to certain
platforms. The challenge is to make a difference in the
case of short range advertisement, precisely to bridge the
“expensive middle man” in this context [1]. For the pur-
pose of proximity marketing for example, commercial
operators will want to call to the attention of his custom-
ers by pushing messages of any form onto the phones of
such clients who we suppose are at a certain distance (for
example most 100 meters) from him, this without de-
pending on the services of any third parties (like mobile
Mobile Applications Provisioning Using Bluetooth Wireless Technology
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96
operators) [3,4]. But how does this commercial operator
detect the presence of his targets, and push these mes-
sages to them? The most common and current technique
used today is messages-based advertisement method th-
rough SMS. Advertisement methods that are based on the
short range wireless technologies through applications
(that will advertise the services offered by the provider)
still to come and to develop [5-8]. Our original approach
contributes in this second area and is based on the Blu-
etooth wireless technology [9-11]. It is indeed an opened
wireless standard that is increasingly being integrated in
mobile devices (and almost every adult today is in pos-
session of a mobile phone). Other important reasons mo-
tivated us for adopting this wireless standard for provi-
sioning of mobile applications. Firstly it uses an unli-
censed frequency hence independent of any mobile oper-
ators and thus cheap. Secondly, many manufacturers are
integrating this technology into their products; ranging
from mobile phones, TVs, cars just to name a few [7]. As
such, using such a wireless technology will simply boast
the size of the targeted market. Thirdly and most impor-
tantly, this short range provisioning method is used in
most case to advertise information to a group of individ-
uals in a given area, with an intended purpose, considered
here as a mobile social network [7]. This is one of the
most important branch of proximity marketing and its
extensions: broadcasting formation on school campus,
museum, conference etc.
Given the challenge, these reasons and objectives, we
propose a self-replicating and distributing methodology
for mobile application provisioning. The application is
ethically continued to spread or auto-replicate by itself
like a virus or a disease, by the help of the technology
which by itself will do self propagation. The principle of
our approach is as follow. Within an environment where
there are many Bluetooth compatible phones, anybody
who is already a subscriber of the application becomes an
ambassador of it. Once a new phone or an Up-In person
is detected thanks to the Bluetooth signal, the subscriber
is going to use a profile which is a Java 60kb MIDlet, to
ask the Up-In person if he wants the subscriber to install
the application on him. For the ethical purpose, the ac-
knowledgement process cannot be bypassed. It is like
asking someone if he would like to participle to a game in
the context of social networking. If he says “YES”, he
will now download and install a MIDlet profile which
will now read all the characteristics of his phone an d then
communicate that with the host phone. The phone now
will know who that phone is, what kind of phone it is, so
it now knows what version of the application might be
needed to move. The application will now transport itself
from this phone to the next phone but following the de-
vice type that the person has. To address the problem, we
start in the Section 2 by stud ying the existing short range
wireless technologies by focusing on Bluetooth. The Sec-
tion 3 presents the solution proposed. The Section 4 pre-
sents a prototype built to validate the approach. The pa-
per ends up with a conclusion and future works but be-
fore, we discuss our solution in Section 5.
2. State of the Art
In this section, we set out to study the existing wireless
technologies that are integrated in mobile phones. We
start by presenting the choice of the technology to adopt.
We then describe the existing solutions for provisioning.
We end up by the presentation of the existing solutions
for advertisement.
2.1. Choice of the Technology to Adopt
The most common wireless technologies integrated into
phones by most mobile phone vendors today are Wi-Fi
[1,2], Infrared, Zegbee [8,12,13] and Bluetooth [7,14,15].
A summary of them is presented on the table 1 below.
The criteria used for selecting the technology to be used
focused on the autonomy of the mobile phones, and the
fact that users of these devices are frequently mobile. As
such, interest was focused on properties (1) and (6) (see
Table 1): communication media and power consumption.
With these properties as focused, we found out that
WI-FI was unsuitable for our methodology since it is
high in energy consumption (inducing low autonomy in
phones using this technology) [1,2]. On the other hand
Table 1. Comparison between short range wireless technol-
ogies.
Technology
Properties WI-FI Infrared BluetoothZegbee
Frequency band (1)2.4 GHz- 2.4 GHz2.4 GHz,
868 MHz,
915 MHz
Communication
media (2) Radio
waves Light rays Radio
waves Radio
waves
Throw output (Raw
data rate) (3) 11-54 MB/s1 MB/s 1 MB/s 250 KB/s
Data type (4) Digital Digital,
audio
Digital,
key-value
pairs
Inter-node
range (5) 100 m 0-10 m 10-100 m10-100 m
Power
consumption (6)
Few hours
on one
battery
(typically
0-6 hrs)
Week/Months
on one battery
Few days
on one
battery
Years on
one battery
Current
Mobile market
penetration (7) Low Medium High
Very low
(emerging)
Mobile Applications Provisioning Using Bluetooth Wireless Technology
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Infrared which uses light rays for propagation has this in
convenience that transceivers have to be in “a line of
site” for communication to be possible (which is practi-
cally impossible since user of the mobile phones are in
movement) [7]. Having discarded Wi-Fi and infrared, the
leading competitors are Bluetooth and Zegbee [8]. Th-
ough Zegbee is relatively economical in terms of energy
consumption, it is still an emerging technology and has
not yet gained ground in the mobile market [12,13]. Blu-
etooth is therefore adopted reasons being that 90% if not
more of the phones in the world market nowadays inte-
grate this technology into their system [1,15].
2.2. Existing Solutions for Provisioning
To use Bluetooth to meet up our objectives, we had to
study the current state of art for provisioning of mobile
applications to mobile clients. The study then serves as a
guide to model our own system for advertisement.
2.2.1. Cla ssi ca l OTA (over the Air) Prov i sioning
Here the mobile client initiates the whole process by dis-
covering the application over a wireless network using a
suitable discovery application like a WAP; web browser
etc. The user uses the HTTP protocol or GPRS to discov-
er applications over a wireless network and then down-
loads them (both application descriptor file and applica-
tion archive file) [3,6]. As inconveniences, 1) the user of
the mobile phone has to go through the painful process of
discovering applications. 2) Most mobile phones in third
world countries like Cameroon do not yet integrate these
expensive discovery applications like WAP, web browser,
GPRS etc.. 3) Downloading the application is expensive
since the user uses an expensive network to get the ap-
plication and secondly, if the application is commercial,
he has to pay for it (pay for the network and then, pay
again for the application).
2.2.2. WAP Push Provisioning
Here, the user of the mobile phone uses a convenient tool
like a PC which has a web browser to discover the appli-
cation very the network (Internet etc), enters require in-
formation about the mobile phone [7]. The provisioning
server then takes care of pushing th e application onto the
mobile phone using the HTTP protocol. For pushing to
be possible the mobile phone in question has to integrate
the same expensive discovery application into their sys-
tems. This means WAP push provision shares some of
the inconveniences of the Classical OTA (over the air
provisioning).
2.2.3. Local Provisioning
In cases where connections to an expensive network or
expensive discovery applications are undesired, other
provisioning methods were designed amongst which we
have: 1) Device connectivity software where most mo-
bile phones come along with software that allows for
sharing of data between PCs and mobile phones. This
software is therefore used to transfer downloaded or de-
veloped application onto mobile phones [16]. 2) Blu-
etooth Infrared connectivity where some of the mobile
phones that are Bluetooth or infrared enabled also use a
similar process to share data between PCs and mobile
phones. A good example of software is Motorola phone
tools [16,17]. The main drawback of the local provision-
ing methods is that they are all usually vendor dependent.
The user of software connectivity for a Nokia phone for
instance will not be compatible for a Samsung phone.
2.3. Existing Solutions for Advertisements: Case
Study of Cameroon
The propagation of information: use of images, sounds,
slogans, or any form of digital signal to communicate
message that will spark targets interest to the desired goal
of the initiator has gained ground in the market-based
economy and in the daily life of every citizen. This pro-
pagation allows commercial cooperators to promote pro-
ducts, politician to connect to voters, states to send infor-
mation to its citizens, individuals to communicate be-
tween themselves etc.
In the particular case of Cameroon, to communicate
with other mobile phones, individuals, co-operations must
be used the services of one of the following GSM/CDMA
networks: MTN, ORANGE and CAMTEL. The average
cost of calls per minute stands today at FCFA 100 local
currency (about $0.2) likewise for calls irrespective of the
distance separatin g the transmitter and the receiver of the
information in transit. Up growing local commercial op-
erators like EXPRESS EXCHANGE, CREDIT COM-
MUNAUTAIRE D’AFRIQUE, EXPRESS MONEY
GRAMME, just to name a few , make use of the services
of these mobile operators to add quality to the services
offered1 to their clients who are usually in possession of
mobile phones. But the cost of propagation of this infor-
mation has a negative impact on the objectives of the
co-operation which is profit maximization. In what fol-
lows, we will be presenting a means to eliminate the de-
pendency of the services of these mobile operators in the
case of short range advertisements. The difference being
that we use applications (containing Icons, animations
etc.) instead of messages.
3. Mobile Applications Provisioning Using
Bluetooth Wireless Technology
Most commercial operators who need to target clients
that are in the specific locations for a specific reason are
facing some challenges: reducing the cost of provisioning
1The
y
basicall
y
offer the mone
y
transfer service.
Mobile Applications Provisioning Using Bluetooth Wireless Technology
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98
numeric data like mobile applications using information
technology for proximity mark eting, local advertisements
and maximizing means of targeting customers with low
or no financial expenses. In this section, we start by de-
scribing the problem. We then follow by presenting the
targeted public. After describing the architecture of our
solution, we talk about the system design and analysis,
starting with the requirements (technical and functional)
then identifying the use cases of the system and ending
with the UML diagrams describing the system.
3.1. Problem Description
We build an original concept on something that exists:
the Bluetooth wireless technology. We are looking for a
suitable way of automatically and ethically distributing a
mobile application within a mob ile so cial network. In th is
group of people and especially in this context, anyone
must have a Bluetooth enabled phone and it needs to be
on. Within such environment, a phone is constantly pro-
pagating itself to all others. For example, in the context
of m-learning, an application can propagate homework to
mobile students.
The phone on which the app lication is alread y installed
is called the subscriber (A). It sends/broadcasts a wel-
come/request message to all Bluetooth enabled devices,
when it is in range which someone (B) who has its Blu-
etooth on. It can look like this: “I am this person A and I
would like to send you this application, will you accept?
Yes/No” This initial message is based on the Bluetooth
standard. The other phone (B) does not yet have anything
from the subscriber (A). (B) just needs to react/answer
back by processing the standard two-sides binding hand-
shake . If th e an sw er is “Y es”, (A) is no t going to send the
application but instead a 60 kb Java MIDlet generic pro-
file [6,17]. That MIDlet profile is now going to read the
IMIE number of the phone (B), identify it, also check the
device manufacturer and then send these information
back to subscriber (A), so it can now understand which
phone (B) is. When (A) is getting into that information, it
will now go into its application data store, a sort of as-
sembly where all versions of application are keeping, for
identifying the phone type of (B), the manufacturer, the
version of the application compatible with (B), takes it
back and installs it on (B). When he is installing it in the
recipient phone (B) after it accepted to participate, it
takes the entire data store and installs it too in it, so it is
ready for the next operation. I ndeed, by an swering ‘Yes’,
the next phone (B) accepted to be the ambassador of the
application. It accepted to provision the application on
other phones and to become a member of a mobile social
network: case of the proximity marketing for example.
We now have a self-replicating application.
To better understand the problem to address, we are
going to illustrate it with a disease case-based example.
In this case indeed, when a new person (the targeted de-
vice (B)) go in contact with a sick man (here the sub-
scriber (A)), the disease (the mobile application) might be
developed differently. The installed copy of a microbe
contacted is according to the immune system (phone type)
of the new per son.
3.2. Targeted Public
The solution to propose will be used for the diffusion of
information within the prox imity of an advertisin g source
(campus, supermarket, conference, museum etc.), a mo-
bile social network group.
3.2.1. Users
The users of this solution or software are individuals, or-
ganizations, corporations, institutions that advertise their
services at short ranges. A good example could be consi-
dered on a school campus where advertising emitters are
hosted in each department to advertise information within
the proximity of the departmen t, a hun dred meters ar ound
the building.
3.2.2. Clients
The source has as aim to attract the clients towards the
services they are offering. A super market can therefore
use this means of advertisement to attract client outside
but within 100 m from the supermarket to advertise their
product. This will then attract clien ts to the super market.
3.3. Architecture of the System
The approach for provisioning and advertisement pro-
posed here has these particularities:
Bluetooth is used in the place of the wireless net-
work.
The discovery functionality of the client is send to
the server side, thus the client no longer needs to
have discovery applications installed on his system.
The only constrain being that the client mobile
phone has to be Bluetooth enabled.
The system we designed is basically client/server
architecture:
Client: this is the user of the device on which the
application will be installed, He uses his Bluetooth
enabled device to search for Bluetooth enabled de-
vices within a radius of, 10meters (if host is a class
one device), 20 meters (class two) or in the best of
cases 100 meters (class three).
Server: amongst devices discovered, the devices se-
lected for pushing will be the servers of our archite-
cture. This will be essentially mobile phones that
support the OBEX object push services (FTP and
OPP).
To achieve the functional objectives described above
Mobile Applications Provisioning Using Bluetooth Wireless Technology
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and illustrated Figure 1, we make use of some of the
protocols found in the Bluetooth protocol stack, namely
Service Discovery Protocol (SDP) and Object exchange
protocol (OBEX) [7].
Service Discovery Protocol (SDP): this is a proto-
col specific to the Bluetooth technology. It is speci-
fically a peer to peer protocol. It is used for the dis-
covery of devices and services found on the devices.
The Bluetooth emitter will therefore use this proto-
col for the discovery of devices within its proximity,
and then go further to search for push services found
on the devices. The push services to be found are
presented in the Table 2.
Object exchange protocol (OBEX): this protocol
is used for the exchange of objects between Blue-
tooth enabled dev ices. It will implement the pushing
functionality of th e two profiles of Table 2.
Here the provisioning server installed in the advertis-
ing emitter found at the advertising source performs Blu-
etooth inquiries to discover Bluetooth enabled devices
round its vicinity. Once found, the devices are filtered.
Filtering here involv ed discarding those that are not in the
category of mobile phones as depicted on Figure 2. After
filtering, the emitter then searches for the connection
URL found on the remote devices service discovery data-
base (SDDB). The URL is returned in the following form
[7,9-11]:
Profile//: Bluetooth address: port; connection setting
Example: Goep//:1234968945:2; master = true; auth-
entication = true; encryption = true.
Thus, to connect to the push services provided by the
Table 2. Push services to use.
Profile Service Name UUID (decimal) UUID (hex)
Object
Push OBEX Object Push4357 0×1105
Object
Push OBEX File Transfe r4358 0×1106
Figure 1. Proposed provisioning and advertisement.
Mobile Applications Provisioning Using Bluetooth Wireless Technology
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Figure 2. Discovery and filtering.
URL above, the provisioning servers has to make use of
the generic object exchange protocol (GOEP) to connect
to the Bluetooth address (1234968745) with an emulated
serial port (2) indicated. And for connection to be possi-
ble it has to connect as a master device and accept au-
thentication and encryption of data during transit. The
process of push service search and provisioning is de-
picted on Figure 3.
1) The Bluetooth emitter uses the service discovery
protocol to search for push services (having UUID
0×1106 and 0×1105), this discovery process is done with-
out the awareness of the link security manager, thus the
remote devices is unaware of the discovery process.
2) The UUID is queried in the SDDB of the remote de-
vice (B), and once found, the URL is returned to the auto-
nomous device (A).
3) The Bluetooth emitter now uses this to connect and
push application’s JAR and JAD file to the inbox of the
remote device.
3.4. System Analysis
The description above helps us to come out with the fol-
lowing UML analysis first starting with the requirement
analysis and ending with the corresponding UML diagra-
ms:
3.4.1. Func ti o nal Requirements
Functional requirements present the needs to be addres-
sed by the software under development.
Device discovery and filtering: this involves dis-
covering remote devices within the vicinity of the
autonomous device, and determines what type of
devices they are (cell phone, smart phone, Laptop,
printer etc), this in view of predicting if the applica-
tion to be deploying will be compatible with the
remote device. In the current context, the applica-
tion is to be deployed on mobile phones having a
human-machine interface, thus eliminating devices
that are not of this category (see Figure 2 above).
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Discovering push services: the autonomous device
will have to determine those devices offering the
OBEX push services (present in the OOP and FTP),
in order to determine those to which it is going to
push MIDlet suites (mobile application ).
Profiling discovered devices: this involves deter-
mining the model of the device discovered: its ven-
dor and version. This in view of determining the
version of the application to be deployed on the de-
vice.
Pushing MIDlet suites: This is the final and most
important function the application has to be desi-
gned. This is the streaming of the application and
transporting it over the Bluetooth radio waves to re-
mote devices, which will then install them.
3.4.2. Requirement Analysis
To meet up with these functional requirements we divide
our system into the following modules:
Discovery Module: performs the inquiry process to
determine Bluetooth enabled devices around the vi-
cinity of the host device (autonomous device).
Filtering Module: is responsible for eliminating de-
vices which are out of the context of the application.
Devices like desktops, Laptops, printers will be eli-
minated.
Push service discovery module: is responsible for
searching in the SDDB of the remote device (disco-
very server) for push services and connecting to
them.
Profiling Module: this module (totally independent
of the main application) will be pushed by the main
application onto a remote device after a push service
has been discovered by the autonomous device.
Once installed on the remote device, this module
(application) will report back to the main applica-
tion, informing it of what model and versions the re-
mote device is.
Figure 3. Push service discovery and provisioning.
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3.5. System Design
From the requirement description seen above, we identify
the actors of the system and different UML diagrams and
the system architecture.
3.5.1. Acto rs and Use Cases
Here we come out with the actors and different use cases
diagrams from the requirement analysis.
a) Application’s initialization of
Actor: User of Autonomous device
Description: he intervenes during the launching of
the application and the entering of PIN codes when
need arises or switch ing the application to a manual
mode to observe all the steps involved in the propa-
gation of the MIDlet suites.
b) Application use case
Actor: Bluetooth Application
Description: the application itself will be looked
upon as an actor, but this time around acting on an-
other system which is the Bluetooth protocols stack,
upon which it will perform actions specific to Blu-
etooth applications, they include, device discovery,
service discovery, filtering of devices, and pushing
of objects.
c) Profiling use case
Actor: Profiling module;
Description: this module is independent of the main
application, and will be deployed to the remote de-
vice for profiling. Once installed on the remote de-
vice, the will query for the runtime platform and
versions of the remote device then report back to the
main application.
3.5.2. Class Diagram
A static view of our system is shown Figure 4. The fol-
lowing classes are derived from the functional require-
ments:
Autonomous_Device: this class represents an inter-
Figure 4. Class diagram (Static view).
Mobile Applications Provisioning Using Bluetooth Wireless Technology
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face to all the functionalities of the application to be
designed.
Device_Searcher: this class is responsible for per-
forming the Bluetooth inquiry process to discover
remote devices in the vicinity of the Autonomous
device.
Filterer: this class will determine the type o f device
and if it is amongst the devices type targeted.
Service_searcher: this class is responsible for sear-
ching push services (OPP and FTP), and obtaining
the universal resource location (URL) for connec-
tion to these services.
File_Sender: this class obtains the URL for connec-
tion, establishes a Bluetooth connection to the re-
mote device, after connection it sends MIDlet su ites
to the remote device.
Profiling_module: this module could be looked
upon as an independent application which will be
pushed by the main application onto a remote de-
vice for profiling. Once it profiles the remote de-
vices, it sends feedbacks to the autonomous device.
The autonomous device then decides which version
of the application to send to the remote device.
3.5.3. Acti vi t y Di a gra ms
We depict by these two activity diagrams two important
aspects of the automation of the functionaliti es of th e sys-
tem. The Figure 5 illustrates the device and service dis-
covery activity and the profiling and provisioning con-
cern is shown in Figure 6.
Figure 5. Activity diagram for device and service discovery.
Figure 6. Activity diagram for profiling and provisioning of MIDlet suites.
Mobile Applications Provisioning Using Bluetooth Wireless Technology
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104
4. Implementation [18]
The prototype is realized in NetBeans IDE2. The tools
and APIs used for development are all based on the java
2 platform3: J2ME, Configurations4, Profiles5. Additional
APIs and tools comprise: Javax.blueooth API (used for
communication between Bluetooth enabled devices),
Java.obex API (used for exchange of objects between
Bluetooth enabled devices), Kuix (a formatting tool used
for decoration of mobile applications interfaces);
J2mePolish (an ideal framework for generating different
versions of application from a single code base imbedded
in xml tags.
We present below a set of events taking place at the
Bluetooth emitter side when it pushes applications for ad-
vertisement to mobile phones. The Figure 7 below firstly
shows the Bluetooth inquiry process for discovery of de-
vices around the vicinity of the autonomous device, and
secondly the devices discovered after a successful inquiry
process, their names and the respective icons of the type
of devices is shown the screen. The Figure 8 shows the
progress of the push services discovery process, once the
push services are discovered, for each of the selected
device (shown left-side of the Figure 8), the JAR and
JAD files are pushed into the inbox of the remote device.
The right-side of the Figure 8 depicts the pushing pro-
cess, whereby the provisioning server pushes both JAR
and JAD files into the inbox of the remote Bluetooth mo-
bile phones.
4.1. Results Analysis: Critics and Limits
The prototype realized is advantageous for advertisement
without depending on the services of any mobile operator,
but is somehow has a set of drawbacks:
Figure 7. Devices discovery.
Figure 8. Service search and discovery.
The applications dep loyed will be functional on ly if
the targeted phone is java enabled (having the
KVM).
The discovery process is slow for emitters with low
processing power. This might be disadvantageous as
the client might have gotten out of proximity of the
emitter.
The prototype realized does not allow for reporting
of event at the receiver side. This is an inconvenien-
ce as the client is unaware of what is about happen-
ing at is happening on his mobile phone.
The painful process of pairing further slows down
the system. This is because at each initial discovery,
the client mobile phone will challeng e the emitter to
authenticate before pushing applications into its in-
box.
5. Conclusion and Futures Works
In this paper, we described a Bluetooth-based method of
propagating information within short range without de-
pending on any mobile operator. This means of propaga-
tion is used for short range advertisement, like proximity
marketing, publishing information on campus and others,
just to name a few. It is also a cheap mean for propagat-
ing information to clients who are in possession of Blu-
etooth compatible mobile phones and thus providing a
cheap and almost zero cost, means of wireless communi-
cation on mobile devices.
To render the system more efficient and increase the
number of targeted clients, the researchers, interested in
this project will envisage the following:
Study and implement the concept of Bluejacking
[7]: this is a means of escaping the Bluetooth link
manager. With this concep t implemented, there will
be no need for the user to enter PIN codes (pairing)
before exchange of data. As such the pushing pro-
cess will be automatic without the awareness of the
user of the mobile phon e (note that it is not a thread
to Bluetooth, as it only pushes objects into the inbox
2http://netbeans.org/index.html, September 2010.
3http://java.sun.com/javaone/online, September 2010.
4A configuration is a Java virtual machine plus a minimal set of class
libraries (http://download.oracle.com/javame/).
5Dene the higher-level APIs for providing the capabilities for a specif-
ic market or industry. Examples of proles are mobile information
device proles designed for devic es l ik e mobile phones, pagers etc.
Mobile Applications Provisioning Using Bluetooth Wireless Technology
Copyright © 2011 SciRes. JSEA
105
and not accessing data of the phone).
Render the system KVM independent: only
phones with having the k-virtual machine will have
deploying applications functional. We can remove
this limitation to KMV by pushing Vcards, Vmes-
sages (which are SMS supported by all phones) for
advertisement [7].
Use MIDP 3.0: still under realization, this version
of the mobile information device profile adds a set
of functionalities that may be advantageous to our
application. Functionalities like autoStart () will al-
lows applications to auto launch themselves after
being deployed and no t the user taking the initiative
to install the application [7] [19].
Implement other Bluetooth GOEP: like the syn-
chronization profile, imaging profile, printing pro-
file etc.
6. Acknowledgements
Our special thanks go to Professor Jean-Claude Derniame
for the time taken to review this paper.
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