CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a 35 U.S.C. § 371 national stage application of PCT International Application No. PCT/EP2017/076866 filed on Oct. 20, 2017, the disclosure and content of which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present disclosure relates generally to the field of wireless communications, and in particular to a method of providing access to IoT resources, a method of obtaining access to IoT resources and corresponding devices, computer programs and computer program products.

BACKGROUND

A Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) tag transmits information, or is “beaconing”. The sole task of such advertising tag (BLE tag in the following) is to broadcast a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) to the surrounding area, ensuring that even a large number of devices in an area with many people are accommodated. By making each such BLE tag broadcast constantly, any number of nearby scanning devices (e.g. communications devices such as smartphones) can pick up the information passively with little conflict. This broadcast only approach avoids an N-squared problem of every scanning device connecting to every BLE tag.

The BLE tag broadcasts the URL in an advertising packet, comprising a Universally Unique IDentifier (UUID) for each specific service that is broadcast. These so called beacons sent by the BLE tag often use an Eddystone-URL format, which is designed to carry URLs in a compressed fashion. The BLE tag can hence be seen as a non-connectable advertiser transmitting the internally stored URL, wherein the URL may be to a particular Internet website, a brand etc. As another example, the BLE tag may be a temperature sensor broadcasting a current temperature.

FIG. 1is a signalling diagram illustrating a current mechanism of the BLE tag (endpoint) using BLE beacons. In the context of Internet of Things (IoT) what can be broadcasted is a specific measurement of a BLE device, which the BLE tag may (but need not) be an integrated part of or co-located with. The BLE tag thus broadcasts the URL (arrow A100) with its measurements appended at the end in Eddystone format (http://[authority]/#6A2M2), wherein the measurements themselves are encoded after the “#” symbol.

The Smartphone or other reading device picking up (arrow A101) the broadcasting follows the provided URL to the website, adding its own location information (arrow A102).

The website will then provide the measurement (arrow A103) with the appropriate settings, e.g. Hypertext Markup language (HTML), JavaScript (JS), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) specifying fonts, size etc. and the information is presented (arrow104) to the user on his/her smartphone.

SUMMARY

Typically, the URL is pointing to a brand, a shop, a store or other representative website. A drawback of the prior art, identified by the inventor of the present disclosure, is that when applied to IoT it basically misuses the concept of URL and Representational state transfer (REST) by appending the actual resource values to the URL every time. When a user reloads (arrow A105) the webpage, e.g. on her smartphone expecting a new value, it will instead render the same previous value since the resource measurement is encoded in the URL (arrow A106).

The BLE tag will broadcast a different URL whenever the measurement changes, thus forcing the user to find the beacon once again. This will draw battery of the user's device, and may also entail costs.

Another drawback is that the current solution requires internet connectivity in order to get the measurement displayed. The vendors thereby obtain the location of the user from the smartphone and are able to best market and sell their services.

An objective of the present disclosure is to address and improve various aspects for BLE devices. A particular objective is to enable communications devices to have a reliable and efficient connection directly to IoT resources. This objective and others are achieved by the methods, devices, computer programs and computer program products according to the appended independent claims, and by the embodiments according to the dependent claims.

The objective is according to an aspect achieved by a method of providing access to IoT resources. The method is performed by a Bluetooth low energy, BLE, tag that supports a Bluetooth wireless technology standard. The method comprises broadcasting a reference to a resource directory comprising reachability information to one or more Internet of Things, IoT, resources and supporting a Constrained Application Protocol, CoAP.

The method provides a number of advantages. The present teachings take advantage of and benefit from modern application layer protocols for Constrained Devices, which is in contrast to the prior art solution. In the various embodiments according to different aspects of the present teachings, enhancements in this regards are provided. The method allows for local communication between a BLE tag and smartphone without the need to connect to a server on the Internet. This in turn provides advantages such as typically being free of charge for the user and often also entails an improved user experience in that a more reliable connection is provided. Further, the method introduces security at the application layer, which protects the advertisement from eavesdroppers.

The objective is according to an aspect achieved by a computer program for a Bluetooth low energy, BLE, tag for providing access to IoT resources. The computer program comprising computer program code, which, when run on at processing circuitry of the BLE tag causes the BLE tag to perform the method as above.

The objective is according to an aspect achieved by a computer program product comprising a computer program as above and a computer readable means on which the computer program is stored.

The objective is according to an aspect achieved by a Bluetooth low energy, BLE, tag for providing access to IoT resources. The BLE tag supports a Bluetooth wireless technology standard and is configured to broadcast a reference to a resource directory comprising reachability information to one or more Internet of Things, IoT, resources and supporting a Constrained Application Protocol, CoAP.

The objective is according to an aspect achieved by a method of obtaining access to IoT resources. The method is performed by a communications device and comprises receiving, from a Bluetooth low energy, BLE, tag, a reference to a resource directory comprising reachability information to one or more Internet of Things, IoT, resources and supporting a Constrained Application Protocol, CoAP; transmitting, to the BLE tag, a request for a list of reachability information to the at least one IoT resource; and receiving in response thereto the list of reachability information to each of one or more IoT resources.

The objective is according to an aspect achieved by a computer program for a communications device for obtaining access to IoT resources. The computer program comprises computer program code, which, when run on at processing circuitry of the communications device causes the communications device to perform the method as above.

The objective is according to an aspect achieved by a computer program product comprising a computer program as above and a computer readable means on which the computer program is stored.

The objective is according to an aspect achieved by a communications device for obtaining access to IoT resources. The communications device is configured to: receive, from a Bluetooth low energy, BLE, tag, a reference to a resource directory comprising reachability information to one or more Internet of Things, IoT, resources and supporting a Constrained Application Protocol, CoAP, transmit, to the BLE tag, a request for a list of reachability information to the at least one IoT resource, and receive in response thereto the list of reachability information to each of one or more IoT resources.

Further features and advantages of the embodiments of the present teachings will become clear upon reading the following description and the accompanying drawings.

