RecurChat: BLE-based message forwarding system with on-site application distribution

摘要

In this paper, we propose an ad-hoc communication system for a smartphone, which utilizes Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). The proposed system is assumed to be used in disaster situation where the Internet connection is not available. It means that a smartphone cannot obtain any information as well as any new application because all the applications are distributed in the cloud such as App Store. However, our proposed system is equipped with the mechanism, called RecurShare, to distribute the applications on-site. In addition, our proposed system has the function to solve "Central-Peripheral problem" which stems from BLE hardware. Generally, a smartphone works as "Central" of BLE connection, and the connection between Centrals cannot be established. Therefore, it is not easy to realize a BLE-based ad-hoc communication system between smartphones except iPhone. Our proposed function utilizes a few peripheral-ready terminal as a router of the network for solving this problem. To evaluate the feasibility of our proposed system, we show that the proposed system can replicate the application on-site and also enable chat among Android smartphones even if some of them are Central-only terminal.