A Comparative Study of Two Bluetooth APIs for

Abstract

In order to minimize human interference, an Automated Wireless Identification System (AWIS) is proposed to monitor individual animals ’ interactions in the wild. This is based on a Bluetooth enabled collar (device) fitted to each animal. When one device comes into the 10 meter range of another device, a peer-to-peer interaction or “Encounter ” is logged. Application developers can utilise the underlying capabilities of the Bluetooth Protocol Stack via an API – Application Programming Interface. The Bluetooth Specification makes no mention of how a simple exposed API is defined, leading many manufacturers to add their own unique APIs. This project investigated Bluetooth Microsoft APIs (Winsock and Virtual Serial Ports) and a proprietary API from Widcomm, with a view to evaluate their support for monitoring mobile device Encounters in real time for the AWIS. In order to compare Bluetooth APIs, it was necessary to use the tools available directly, to observe how the APIs enable Bluetooth development. Winsock and Virtual Serial Ports are the recommended Windows APIs and Widcomm is one of the many available proprietary APIs. Experimental applications were written to test the most suitable API to use in an AWIS application. A criterion is used for testing was the functionality required by the AWIS device discovery, service discovery and data-transfer, as well as flexibility and enabling rapid prototyping. The Widcomm API was found to be the most suitable API for the AWIS implementation as it allows for a great deal of low-level functionality while hiding any unnecessary detail from the developer. Virtual Serial Ports provided limited functionality and flexibility, and Winsock provided the least functionality