Blue Tooth Development

Student: Naveenan Vasudevan

Supervisor: Dr. Adam Postula

Category: Computer Systems Engineering Thesis Project

Research carried out at the Princess Alexandra hospital in Brisbane found that there was a need to reduce paperwork burdening medical staff. To achieve this goal, we developed the BlueNurse wireless system to remotely monitor and log patient vital signs. The Bluetooth specification for wireless communication reduces all interactions between devices to a short-range, low power, ad hoc wireless connection.

The design and implementation of a Bluetooth wireless link for the BlueNurse system forms the topic of this thesis. Two host protocols: the Host Controller Interface (HCI) and the Logical Link and Adaptation Protocol (L2CAP), were implemented in software. The wireless link was created using the host software protocols with a commercially available Bluetooth module.

This host software was ported to both an Atmel AT90S8515 microcontroller and the Intel x86 series of processors. This portability was achieved by using the ANSI C language. The ad-hoc nature of Bluetooth was demonstrated with dynamic connection establishment and release. Asynchronous data transfer with 1Kbyte data packets was also achieved using L2CAP segmentation and reassembly. Packet routing and dynamic network formation could not be implemented as the Bluetooth modules only support point-to-point connection.

Poster Presentation (PDF)

Thesis Document (PDF)