Bluewave: enabling opportunistic context sharing via bluetooth device names

Context-aware applications oftentimes require devices to share a user's context in order to provide them with relevant information and services. However, current context-sharing techniques require significant amounts of setup before they can be used, making them cumbersome when devices need to share information once or spontaneously. To address this problem, we present Bluewave, a Bluetooth-based technique that allows devices to opportunistically share context when they are nearby. With Bluewave, devices upload context to a trusted server, and extend their Bluetooth name with a URL and a set of temporary credentials. Other devices can obtain this information via Bluetooth discovery, and use it to request and receive context without having to pair. Bluewave provides a simple but effective way for users to share context through their mobile devices, supporting applications where the environment needs to collect information about the user. Our system's design has been guided by user feedback, and integrates privacy controls to let users manage how their context is being shared. In this paper, we describe Bluewave's architecture, and show how it can be used to create a wide range of "just in time" services. We argue that Bluewave's low battery consumption, combined with its speed and compatibility with existing devices, significantly reduces the cost of sharing context, and provides a practical way to create, deploy, and prototype a new generation of context-aware applications.