A Bluetooth Infrastructure for Automatic Services Access in Ubiquitous and Nomadic Computing Environments

The proliferation of mobile devices and wireless technologies pave the ground to new scenarios that attract the interest of service providers and business operators. However, to let mobile users able to receive the same services independently from the context in which they operate, several open issues need to be solved. One of these issues is related to the current levels of security that often require mobile users to exchange secret credentials with the network operators or an authentication server. This constraint limits mobile users who wish to access wireless services anywhere without caring for configuration of used devices. This paper proposes a new device that enables a mobile user to access wireless services in a seamless and automatic way using a context-aware approach in ubiquitous/nomadic computing environments. This device implements a Bluetooth personal identification badge that automatically anthenticates and authorizes a mobile user to access services independently of the mobile terminal used. Any user's terminal can retrieve proper credentials in order to authenticate and gain access to different network access points. The design and implementation of a prototype of such a device is presented.