About This Book

This book provides an introduction to Bluetooth wireless technology and Bluetooth programming, with a specific focus on the parts of Bluetooth that concern a software developer. While there is already a host of existing literature about Bluetooth, few of these texts are written for the programmer who is concerned primarily with creating Bluetooth software applications. Instead, they tell all about Bluetooth, when most of the time, the programmer is interested only in a tiny fraction of this information.

This book purposefully and happily leaves out a great deal of information about Bluetooth. Concepts are simplified and described in ways that make sense to a programmer, not necessarily the ways they're laid out in the Bluetooth specification. The approach is to start simply, allowing the reader to quickly master the basic concepts with the default parameters before addressing a few advanced features.

Despite these omissions, this book is a rigorous introduction to Bluetooth, albeit with a narrow focus. Applications can be developed without an understanding of the radio modulation techniques or the algorithms underlying the generation of Bluetooth encryption keys. Programmers, however, do need to understand issues such as the available transport protocols, the processes governing establishing connections, and the mechanisms for transferring data.

We strongly believe in learning by example and have included working programs that demonstrate the concepts and techniques introduced in the text.