EXCLUSIVE PAIRING TECHNIQUE FOR BLUETOOTH COMPLIANT DEVICES

• US 20080287062A1
• Filed: 05/17/2007
• Published: 11/20/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 05/17/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Johnson & Johnson Surgical Vision, Inc. (Johnson & Johnson)
• Original Assignee: Advanced Medical Optics Incorporated (Johnson & Johnson)
• Inventors: Hunter, Timothy, Claus, Michael J., Ma, Dung
• Granted Patent: US 8,750,796 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/41.2
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/02 Protecting privacy or anonymity, e.g. protecting personally identifiable information [PII]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/06 Authentication
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/50 Secure pairing of devices
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/71 Hardware identity
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 84/18 Self-organising networks, e.g. ad-hoc networks or sensor networks

Abstract

A method and system of establishing communications between at least two independent software modules in a safety critical system, such as a medical system, is provided. The design comprises providing an exclusive Bluetooth connection between at least two wireless devices. A master wireless device is configured with Bluetooth master device functionality and a slave wireless device is configured with Bluetooth slave device functionality. The wireless devices are employed in performing procedures in a safety critical environment. The method further comprises acquiring a stored unique address from the slave wireless device over the Bluetooth connection, comparing the stored unique address to a master wireless device unique address available at the master wireless device, and exclusively pairing the master wireless device and the slave wireless device when the unique address acquired from the slave wireless device is found to identically match the master wireless device unique address.

Claims

1. A method for exclusively pairing wireless devices, comprising:

providing a Bluetooth connection between at least two wireless devices, wherein a master wireless device is configured with Bluetooth master device functionality and a slave wireless device is configured with Bluetooth slave device functionality;

acquiring a stored unique address from the slave wireless device over said Bluetooth connection;

comparing the stored unique address to a master wireless device unique address available at the master wireless device; and

exclusively pairing said master wireless device and the slave wireless device when the unique address acquired from the slave wireless device is found to identically match the master wireless device unique address.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein exclusively pairing enables a master-slave communications path to connect one master wireless device to one slave wireless device.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the master wireless device further establishes a single exclusive pairing with one slave wireless device at one time.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein acquiring further comprises:

configuring the one slave wireless device to store the master wireless device unique address;

retrieving the unique address stored in the slave wireless device; and

sending said unique address to the master wireless device when requested by the master wireless device.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the comparing further comprises determining whether stored unique address acquired from the slave wireless device is identical to the master wireless device unique address.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising explicitly un-pairing said Bluetooth master device and said one Bluetooth slave device when the acquired unique address does not match the Bluetooth master device'"'"'s unique address.

7. An exclusive pairing system for pairing a Bluetooth compliant slave device to a computing platform comprising a Bluetooth pairing utility and an exclusive pairing utility, the exclusive pairing system comprising;

a device controller configured to control communications between the computing platform and the Bluetooth compliant slave device over a wireless communications network and enable exclusive pairing between the computing platform and the Bluetooth compliant medical slave device;

wherein the Bluetooth compliant slave device is configured to support a wireless mode of operation, and further wherein the computing platform is configured to establish exclusive pairing between the computing platform and the Bluetooth compliant slave device over the wireless communications network.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the Bluetooth pairing utility comprises a graphical user interface for managing Bluetooth device discovery and authentication.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the exclusive pairing utility further comprises a graphical user interface for managing the configuration and operation of exclusively connected non-fixed slave devices.

10. The system of claim 7, wherein the controller comprises master device functionality capable of transmitting information to and receiving information from the Bluetooth compliant slave device.

11. The system of claim 7, wherein the Bluetooth compliant slave device includes Bluetooth slave device functionality capable of transmitting information to and receiving information from the controller.

12. The system of claim 7, wherein the computing platform and controller are configured to exclusively pair the computing platform to a plurality of slave devices having Bluetooth functionality.

13. A method for providing exclusive Bluetooth communication between a computing platform controller and a wireless device, comprising:

establishing a Bluetooth communications path between the computing platform controller and the wireless device;

forming an exclusive communications path between said computing platform controller and only said wireless device using a unique address obtained from the wireless device by the computing platform controller when said unique address matches a computing platform controller address.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the Bluetooth communications path is formed in accordance with a Bluetooth discovery and authentication specification.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein the forming further comprises sending the unique address from the wireless device over a wireless network in response to queries from the computing platform controller.

16. The method of claim 13, wherein forming the exclusive communications path further comprises comparing the unique address stored in the wireless device to the computing platform controller address to determine if a match condition exists.

17. The method of claim 13, wherein said Bluetooth master and slave devices form an exclusive communications path when the unique address acquired from the wireless device is found by the computing platform controller to be an identical match the computing platform controller address.

18. The method of claim 13, further comprising explicitly un-pairing wireless device from the computing platform controller when the unique address acquired from the wireless device is found by the computing platform controller to not match the computing platform controller address.

19. The method of claim 13, wherein pairing devices enables a master-slave communications path to connect a single master device to a single slave device.

20. The method of claim 13, wherein the Bluetooth master device further establishes a single exclusive pairing with a single slave device at any one time.