Bluetooth based wireless Internet applications for indoor hotspots: experience of a successful experiment during CeBIT 2001

Wireless Internet access based on wireless LAN or Bluetooth networks will become popular within the next years. New services will be offered that especially make use of location and personal profile to filter Internet access. Moreover "push" services will allow the unsolicited event based information transfer depending on user configurations. We have introduced such services "The Mobile Fairguide" during CeBIT 2001 in a Bluetooth network that covered a full hall of 25000 m/sup 2/ with 130 base-stations. The content was generated from the official CeBIT database. We were able to show that Bluetooth is a usable technology for such applications especially if PDA are used as terminal devices. Moreover we tested our architecture in a real live scenario especially with respect to scalability and mobility. The additional services like guiding, alarming and broadcasting were offered and appreciated by the visitor. The remaining problems resulting from missing protocols and faults in the base-band implementation of the selected chip-set have been fixed in the meantime.