Accessing ubiquitous services using smart phones

The integration of Bluetooth service discovery protocol (SDP), and GPRS Internet connectivity into phones provides a simple yet powerful infrastructure for accessing services in nomadic environments. In this paper, we discuss the design and implementation of SDIPP, a protocol for provisioning services on smart phones. Although several service discovery protocols have been proposed earlier, such as SLP, Jini, UPnP, Salutation, they all have their own infrastructure requirements and target audiences, Bluetooth SDP is an on-the-fly service discovery protocol. However, it is not nearly as powerful as its counterparts. SDIPP works by augmenting Bluetooth SDP with Web access and personalization. Payment of services has been overlooked in the protocols proposed earlier. SDIPP provides a novel protocol for anonymous payment, based on the idea of Millicent scrips. We have implemented a few services to illustrate our protocol. We report on our experiences and experimental results. In particular, we analyze and provide an application level solution to the Bluetooth inquiry clash problem that was discovered in the process.