KR20020024331A - Data delivery through beacons - Google Patents

Abstract

The communication system includes at least one beacon device 12, 14 capable of wireless message transmission and at least one portable device 10 capable of receiving such message transmission. The beacon device 12 is arranged to be able to broadcast a series of inquiry messages 60, each in the form of a plurality of predetermined data fields INQ arranged according to the first communication protocol, such as Bluetooth. . To send additional data via broadcast, the beacon device 12 adds an additional data field (BCD) that carries broadcast data to each inquiry message prior to transmission, and the portable device 10 receives the transmitted inquiry message and Read broadcast data from the additional data field.

Description

DATA DELIVERY THROUGH BEACONS}

Subscribers in mobile telephony networks have increased worldwide in recent years, and because of advances in technology and the addition of features, cellular phones have become a trusted personal device. As a result, a mobile information society is developing in which personalized and localized services are becoming increasingly important. Such "Context-Aware" mobile phones are being used with low power, short range base stations to provide location-specific information in places such as shopping malls. This information may include local maps, information about nearby shops and restaurants, and the like. The user's CA terminal may be equipped to filter the received information according to pre-stored user preferences, the user being alerted only when a data item of particular interest is received.

An example of a CA terminal is given in US Pat. No. 5,835,861, which discloses the use of a wireless telephone in the context of an advertising bulletin board. The user of the wireless telephone sends a prompt signal to the active advertisement source by operating his wireless telephone and receives a response signal containing the telephone number of the advertising vendor from the advertising source. Get your vendor's phone number. This telephone number can then be used to automatically call the vendor through a public switched telephone network. Optionally, this phone number can be stored for later use. This arrangement can be used to call a vendor without having to remember or record the telephone number. The signal between the bulletin board and the caller may be transmitted as a modulated infrared (IR) signal.

As another example, Hewlett-Packard publishes publications on the web at <http://www.cooltown.hp.com/papers/webpres/WebPresence.htm> about the "Cooltown" project. It was. A collection of web technologies, wireless networks, and portable client devices provide design opportunities for computer / communication systems. In the Cooltown project, a location-aware system is created using a URL for addressing, a physical URL for transmission via beacons, detection of a URL for discovery, and a localized web server for directories. Can be. This system exists universally to support nomadic users. On top of this infrastructure, an Internet connection may be introduced to support communication services. The existence of the Web provides a model for supporting wandering users without a central control point, through the World Wide Web and the physical world in which the user lives.

Cooltown museums and bookstores offer visitors a Web-enhanced experience. When a visitor visits the museum, his Portable Digital Assistant (PDA) may receive a web URL from a wireless "beacon". These beacons are small infrared transceivers that are close to a picture or sculpture, and the URL links to a web with information about the art. Using the PDA's web browser, the visitor can read or hear about the artist or its work and related works of art in the museum. The URL can also be stored as a bookmark for further study or the URL can be used to select a representation of the artwork from the museum's online store.

An important requirement for CA devices is that the user does not have to take action such as being adjacent to the beacon while the connection between the portable device and the beacon is established (as in the case of the system in US Pat. No. 5,835,861 described above). It will be appreciated that these devices are quickly and effectively gathering data from the beacon so that there is no need to initiate a conversation. An additional requirement is that the portable device should be kept relatively simple as long as the data it collects from the beacon is relevant: whereas in the Cooltown system it is necessary to support the user's navigation within a web page that appears as a broadcasted URL. full) Requires web browser and display capabilities.

The present invention relates in particular to services provided to users of electronic equipment, not limited to users of mobile communication devices such as portable telephones and suitably equipped PDAs (personal digital assistant terminals). The invention also relates to a means for the transmission of such a service and a portable device for receiving the service.

1 is a simplified block diagram of a beacon and a portable device implementing the present invention.

2 is a simplified diagram of a series of devices within a linked beacon infrastructure.

3 is a chart showing part of the transmission of a train of inquiry access codes centered on a given frequency;

4 illustrates the alternation between trains of inquiry messages over the duration of the inquiry broadcast.

5 illustrates the insertion of broadcast data packets within an existing transmission slot.

6 illustrates a first arrangement for transmitting beacon clock data in the order of the inquiry message train.

FIG. 7 illustrates an arrangement different from that of FIG. 6 for transmitting beacon clock data. FIG.

It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a system for the transmission of data over a beacon, in which the amount of dedicated circuitry and the operating procedure are kept low.

According to a first aspect of the invention, there is provided a communication system comprising at least one beacon device capable of wireless message transmission and at least one portable device capable of receiving such message transmission, wherein the beacon is Arranged to broadcast a series of inquiry messages each in the form of a plurality of predetermined data fields arranged according to a first communication protocol, said beacon further arranged to add an additional data field to each inquiry message before transmission, said at least One portable device is arranged to receive a sent inquiry message and is arranged to read data from the additional data field containing location information. By adding additional fields (as appropriate at the end of each inquiry message), the data broadcast can be run on top of an existing inquiry process, so that normal delay can be avoided while such a process is executed prior to data transmission. Moreover, by placing an additional field at the end of the transmitted message according to the communication protocol (preferably but not necessarily Bluetooth), a conventional protocol-compliant device that is not intended for reception of a beacon signal may operate according to the protocol. The additional data can simply be ignored without damaging the data.

If the protocol is Bluetooth (or similar frequency hopping arrangement), the beacon can be configured to broadcast a series of inquiry messages in a predetermined clock frequency order, with the clock information for this beacon being stored in an additional data field. Are transported by sea. As will be described in more detail below with respect to embodiments of the present invention, this may improve the query performance of the Bluetooth system and reduce the time it takes to establish a connection for data exchange.

This beacon may be arranged to include an indication indicative of the presence of the additional data field in one of the predetermined data fields (as appropriate for fields not currently used or unassigned), thereby providing beacon data. A device configured to receive may be triggered to read from additional data fields.

The beacon may be arranged to include the first comparison data in the message, the portable device to identify when there is a match between the storage means holding the second comparison data and the first and second comparison data and additional data fields. And a comparator means arranged to provide data read from and to provide no data if they do not match. Such second comparison data may be predetermined and / or stored in advance, or this second comparison data may be adaptively determined from user profiling of the portable device user.

According to the present invention there is also provided a mobile communication device for use in the above-mentioned system, comprising: a receiver capable of receiving a short range wireless inquiry message comprising a plurality of data fields according to a first communication protocol; Means for determining when a data field has been added to the plurality of data fields, and means for reading data from the additional data field and providing the data to a user.

In another embodiment according to the present invention, there is provided a beacon device capable of wireless message transmission for use in a communication system comprising a beacon device and at least one portable device capable of receiving a message transmission, wherein the beacon The device is configured to broadcast a series of inquiry messages each in the form of a plurality of predetermined data fields arranged in accordance with the first communication protocol and to add additional data fields to each inquiry message prior to transmission to receive the sent inquiry messages. Enable the at least one portable device arranged to read data from the additional data field. As described in the context of this system as a whole, a beacon device may be arranged to add the additional data field to the end of each inquiry message, which beacon device may add the additional data to one data field of the predetermined data field. And the first communication protocol may comprise Bluetooth messaging, the device may be configured to broadcast a series of inquiry messages at a predetermined clock continuous frequency, wherein the first communication protocol comprises: Clock information for the beacon is included in the data carried by the additional data field.

In another embodiment according to the invention, a method is provided for enabling a user of a portable communication device to receive a broadcast message, wherein the at least one beacon device is arranged in accordance with a first communication protocol. Broadcast a series of inquiry messages, each in the form of a field, where the beacon adds an additional data field to each inquiry message that carries the broadcast message data prior to transmission, and wherein the portable device receives the sent inquiry message and the Read broadcast data from the additional data field.

Preferred embodiments of the invention are now described with reference to the accompanying drawings only by date.

In the following detailed description, consider a CA application in particular using the Bluetooth protocol for the delivery of messages from a beacon to a portable device (telephone, PDA, or otherwise). As can be seen, the general inventive concept of including a broadcast channel as part of an inquiry procedure is not limited to Bluetooth devices and is applicable to other communication arrangements, in particular frequency hopping systems.

1 is a simplified block diagram of a CA mobile phone 10 for use with one or more low power short range base stations or beacons 12 and 14. As mentioned above and described in more detail below, such an arrangement may be used to provide location-specific information, such as local maps, information about adjacent stores and restaurants, in places such as shopping malls, and beacons may provide information keys. Download to your mobile device. An information key is a small data object that provides a reference to a source of full information, which is in the form of a number of predetermined fields, one of these fields. May include a descriptive text short that is given to the user. Another field may be some form of pointer, i.e. an address, for example a URL or a telephone number. Other supplementary fields can control how data is presented to the user and how the address can be used. Beacons typically broadcast a number of these keys cyclically and each key is typically associated with a different service.

Problems with beacon construction and configuration include beacon ranges that depend on output power (typically in the range of 1 dB to 100 dB), local interference levels, and receiver sensitivity.

The CA terminal 10 of the user includes an antenna 16 connected to the transceiver stage 18 for receiving and transmitting messages. The outgoing message originates from a user input to the phone, ie audio input via microphone 20 and A / D converter 22 or other data input via keypad or other input means 24. These inputs are processed by the signal and data processing stage 26 into a message data format and converted by the encoder 28 into a transmission format before being fed to the transceiver stage 18.

Messages received via antenna 16 and transceiver 18 are transmitted to filtering and signal processing stage 32 via decoding stage 30. If the data carried in the message is for presentation on the phone's display screen 34, this data is optionally buffered 38 and then sent to the display driver 36, which formats the display image. . As can be seen, the display 34 can be a relatively simple low resolution device, and the conversion of received data into display data can be performed as a subset of the functionality of the processing stage 32 without the need for a dedicated display driver stage. Can be.

If this message carries data coming from one or the other beacons 12 and 14, the phone is capable of filtering the received information according to user preferences previously stored in the storage means 40, The user is alerted only if the comparison of stored preference data with the subject matter indicator in the message indicates that a data item of particular interest has been received (ie, this information is only stored in buffer 38). And / or may be given to screen 34}.

For conventional audio messages, audio data is output by the filter and processing stage 32 to the earphones or speakers 46 through the D / A converter 42 and the amplifier 44. Receipt of such a message from telephone network 48 is indicated by arrow 50: Telephone network 48 also links from telephone 10 to Wide-Area Network (WAN) server 52 and; It provides a link to one or more remote service providers 56 that provide a data source for phone 10 via WAN 54 (which may be the Internet).

The communication between the CA terminal {telephone 10} and the CA base station {beacon 12} takes two forms: 'push' and 'pull'. In the 'push' mode, information is broadcast to all portable terminals 10 in the form of short 'keys', denoted by reference numeral 60 by beacons 12,14. The key may take many forms depending on the application but may generally include a concise description of the information being transmitted and a pointer to, for example, a URL, for more full information identifying the service provider of one of the service providers 56. .

The key is received by the terminal 10 'involuntarily', ie without direct intervention by the user, and the comparator function is applied to the processing stage 32 to automatically filter according to the user's preset preferences. Suitably, the processing stage is operable to apply the comparator function to multiple simultaneous or redundant copies sufficient to process in parallel a relatively large number of keys that may be received. Some are kept for further study, others cause the user to be alerted immediately. By way of example, the store may choose to push the details of the special offer to the passing terminal, knowing that the user who is interested and thus set up the filter 32 will be alerted by his terminal accordingly.

Sometimes, a user will want to get more information than is contained in a key. Here, the 'pull' mode allows the user to establish a connection with the server 56 (which does not necessarily have to be specifically configured for use of the CA) and actively requests that information be pulled down to the terminal 10. Thus this mode is typically interactive.

Base stations or beacons are typically independent of each other (in a shopping mall configuration, each store maintains its own beacon without referring to any beacons provided by neighboring stores), while the beacons It may be networked in whole or in part with at least some cooperation, such as for.

2 is a diagram of such a system 100 consisting of linked beacons implementing the present invention, for example providing an implementation of an infrastructure for use in department stores, shopping malls, theme parks, and the like. The system 100 includes a plurality of beacons 102, 104, 106, 108 distributed over a series of locales. Each beacon 102-108 broadcasts one or more short range inquiry signals in a timeslot format described in more detail below. Beacons 102-108 are controlled by Beacon Infrastructure server (BIS) 110, with one or more terminals 112, 114, 116, 118 connected to this server 110. . Terminals 112 to 118 are in the form of data added by a service provider, i.e., a user of beacons 102 to 108, piggybacked to the inquiry facilitation signal transmitted by beacons 102 to 108. Allows you to create or edit assigned service slots. The service provider may lease one beacon or one of the beacons' service slots from the infrastructure provider. For this reason, the server 110 provides a simple HTML template for filling by one of the terminals 112 to 118 by the user. For example, after a template has been populated with a detailed description of the service and other information so that the data can be run over a beacon broadcast, the template can be, for example, secure HTTP (S-HTTP) or secure sockets layer (SSL). ) Is preferably returned to server 110 via a secure link. SSL forms a secure link between the client and server, through which any amount of data can be transmitted securely. S-HTTP is designed to securely send individual messages. The server 110 then forms an appropriate additional data packet to append to the inquiry signal of the related one of the beacons 102-108 based on the information submitted in the template. System 100 may further include an application server 120 to assist in executing various functions as will be readily understood by a skilled reader.

Referring again to FIG. 1, the strong candidate technology for the wireless link required for at least the 'push' mode of the CA system described above is Bluetooth, which is expected to be part of the majority of the mobile phones 10. Because there is. Problems can be seen when using the 'push' mode or analyzing the Bluetooth protocol for CA broadcast. In an ideal case, the terminal 10 detects fixed beacons 12 and 14 and extracts basic information from the beacons without the need for the terminal 10 to transmit. However, this type of broadcast operation is not supported by the current Bluetooth specification.

In part, the incompatibility follows the frequency hopping characteristics of the Bluetooth beacon system, which indicates that the terminal must be synchronized with this beacon in both time and frequency in order for broadcast messages (or indeed any messages) to be received by the passing terminal. it means. The portable device 10 must synchronize its clock to the beacon clock and infer which of the several hopping sequences are being used from the beacons identity.

In order to make this inference, conventionally, portable devices have been required to participate-as a slave-to a piconet managed by a beacon as a piconet master. Two sets of procedures are used, namely "inquiry" and "page". Inquiry allows a would-be slave to find the base station and request to join the piconet. The page allows the base station to invite the slave to make a choice to join the net. Analysis of these procedures indicates that the time it takes to join a piconet and then be in a position to receive information from the master can be tens of seconds, which is too long for a CA application, where the user is involved in the entry process. You can get out of range of the beacon before this is complete.

The difficulty of receiving broadcast data from the beacons is caused, at least in part, by the frequency hopping characteristics of Bluetooth and similar systems. The Bluetooth inquiry procedure has been specifically proposed to solve the problem of connecting a master and a slave, and the Applicant has recognized that it is possible to piggy-back a broadcast channel through an inquiry message sent by the master. . Only the CA terminal needs to read the broadcast channel message and only the CA base station or beacon transmits the message. As a result, at the air interface, the mechanism is fully compatible with conventional (non-CA) Bluetooth systems.

To illustrate how this is implemented, consider first how the inquiry procedure works with reference to FIGS. 3 and 4. When the Bluetooth unit wishes to find another Bluetooth device, the Bluetooth unit enters a so-called inquiry substate. In this mode, the Bluetooth unit sends an inquiry message containing one General Inquiry Access Code (GIAC) or multiple optional Dedicated Inquiry Access Code (DIAC). This message transmission is repeated at several levels. First, the message is transmitted at 16 frequencies out of a total of 32 that make up the inquiry hopping order. This message is sent twice at two frequencies in an even timeslot, and then the odd timeslot is used to hear the reply at two corresponding inquiry response hopping frequencies. The sixteen frequencies and their response counterparts can thus be covered within sixteen timeslots, or 10 Hz. The chart of FIG. 3 shows the transmission order at 16 frequencies centered around f {k}, where f {k} represents the inquiry hopping order.

The next step is to repeat the transmission sequence of at least N _inquiry times. At a minimum, this should be set to N _lookups = 256 repetitions of the entire order of constructing a transmission train called inquiry transmission train A. Next, the inquiry transmission train A is swapped with the inquiry transmission train B constituting the transmission order with the remaining 16 frequencies. Train B is also composed of 256 iterations of the transmission sequence. The overall inquiry transmission cycles between the transmissions of train A and train B. As shown in FIG. 4, the specification describes that switching between trains must occur at least three times to ensure that all sets of responses are in an error-free environment. This means that one inquiry broadcast takes at least 10.24 seconds.

One way to reduce this is to switch between inquiry transmission trains more quickly, i.e., without waiting for the 256 iterations of 10 ms for 2.56 seconds to cover 16 timeslots. This can be appropriately achieved by setting the system to switch if the inquiry message is not detected in the rest of the existing train, for example if this inquiry message is not detected after 50 ms.

The portable device to be discovered by the beacon enters an inquiry scan substate. Here, the device hears a message containing the GIAC or DIAC of interest. The device also operates in a periodic manner. The device listens at a single hop frequency during the lookup scan period, which should be long enough to cover the 16 lookup frequencies used for lookup. The interval between the starting points of the continuous scan should not be greater than 1.28 seconds. The selected frequency comes from the 32 lists that make up the inquiry hopping order.

Upon hearing an inquiry containing the appropriate IAC, the portable device enters the so called inquiry response substep and sends a number of inquiry response messages to the beacon. The beacon then calls the portable device and invites the device to join the piconet.

As shown in FIG. 5 and described above, the Applicant has an extra field added to the inquiry message that allows the inquiry message sent by the base station to carry a user-defined payload (CA data). Suggest that. In the CA scenario, this payload is used to convey broadcast information, or key, to the CA terminal during the inquiry procedure. It will be appreciated that by adding this field to the end of the inquiry message, this message can be ignored without changing the non-CA receiver. In addition, by using CA-specified DIAC, the CA receiver can be alerted for the presence of extra information fields.

The presence of an extra data field means that conventionally allowed guidance space at the end of the Bluetooth inquiry packet is reduced. However, this space—the one provided to give the frequency synthesizer time to change to a new hop frequency—is not commonly used because it allows the current frequency synthesizer to switch at a speed that does not need to be extended to extra guidance space. to be. The standard inquiry packet is an ID packet that is 68 bits long. Since this packet is transmitted in a half-slot, the allocated guide space is (625 / 2-68) = 244.5 ms (625 ms slot duration, 1 M bits / sec signaling rate). Modern synthesizers can switch routines considered by those skilled in the art in much less time with a value of 100 ms or lower. Applicants will therefore readily appreciate that 100 bits are allocated as an appropriate size for this new field, but of course other field sizes are possible.

The CA handset can receive broadcast data quickly without being required to execute the long procedure of joining the piconet. Moreover, because the handset does not need to transmit any information, there is a resulting power savings that will be particularly important in dense environments where many CA base stations may exist. Nevertheless, when the handset is in interactive mode and wants to join the piconet to get more information, the handset can use the default inquiry procedure as usual. There is no loss of functionality through supporting additional data fields.

In a typical embodiment, four of the 100 bits may be lost as trailer bits for the ID field, which is the result of being read by the correlator. Of the remaining 96 bits, Applicant's preferred allocation is to allow 64 to be used as data and 32 to be used as 2/3 forward error correction (FEC) checksums, where, checksum, any header included, and Other overhead may greatly reduce the number of bits available for data, in some situations to about 10 bits or less. Thus, each inquiry burst contains 8 bytes of broadcast data. In most common scenarios, by a second group of A train and B train, the portable device has discovered a base station and understood that this base station is a CA beacon and is waiting for broadcast data. Since the device is listening specifically, the portable device can read 256 bursts of data at least twice (A and B), providing two lots of 2K bytes, 4K bytes total.

At this stage, the portable device does not know the phase of the beacon clock because this information was not transmitted. To assist the portable device, the clock information is transmitted to at least some trains in the first A and B groups, as shown in FIG. 6, with some auxiliary information indicating when the next switching between A and B occurs. This clock information is transmitted in place of CA broadcast data, so that means are provided to identify between two data channels. Using a separate DIAC is one possible way.

If the portable device knows the timing of the beacon, the portable device also knows how the beacon hops, which provides the ability to track all transmissions of one train. Since there are 16 transmissions in one frame, the final CA channel has 16 times as much capacity and can carry 64K bytes of information.

Since the terminal wakes up every 1.28 seconds or less, the terminal will generally have obtained the clocking information required by the terminal by a halfway mark in the first A or B period. As shown in Fig. 7, switching from clock to data in these half-marked marks provides a number of advantageous advantages. First, some data may be received in less than 5 seconds at the beginning of the inquiry procedure. Secondly, the terminal may still respond to the important key by automatically sending an inquiry response message to the base station (if that is the proper action the terminal will take), even if the key appears relatively late in the period. It should be noted that no increase in capacity is assumed.

In the foregoing, the portable device will receive all additional data field packets on one of the 32 lookup channels, thereby using only 1/32 of the available bandwidth. As can be appreciated, if the uncertainty regarding when the portable terminal (beacon slave) receives the first inquiry packet can be overcome, the predetermined characteristic of the hopping order can be accommodated and thus the full bandwidth can be used. In order for the slave to synchronize with the master lookup hopping order from the point it received the first packet, the slave needs to know both the location and the master clock offset of the first received packet in the master hopping order. In the example below, it is assumed that the master follows a Bluetooth minimum lookup procedure that includes 256 iterations of a 16 channel lookup hopping order with 3 train switching (as in FIG. 4). Each sweep across 16 channels takes 10 ms.

An alternative way of synchronizing slave hopping is to transmit clocking data in every broadcast field. The additional data field BCD (FIG. 1) carries 4 bytes including the following information:

Master clock offset (2 bytes),

Number of All Train Iterations (1 byte)-Assuming that the full train consists of 256 iterations of a 10-kV train, this parameter ranges from 0 to 255 (the query is switched to the next previous train). before doing). This indicates to the slave when the master next switches the entire train.

How many previous train switches have been completed (1 byte) within the current lookup period-this data indicates to the slave what the master will do at the end of the current all train, i.e. if the master switches to another all train or the lookup procedure Indicates whether to terminate.

As long as the channel is not repeated in the 10 ms train, no field is needed to indicate the position of the current channel in the hopping order since the slave can derive it from the recognition of the order.

From the foregoing, by adding 4 bytes to each additional field packet, the slave carries 4 additional bytes at the end of the inquiry while still having 4 bytes available (from 64 preferred quotas among 100 bits for data). It will be appreciated that the packet can be picked up.

Considering the completed beacon signal, it will be readily understood that the completed beacon signal needs to be divided into a number of four byte packets and one four byte packet is transmitted in each inquiry packet. For purposes of illustration, assuming that the length of the beacon signal is fixed, the entire signal at 16kB can be accommodated in a single lookup train (one train is 256 iterations of a 16 channel hopping sequence, 256 * 16 * 4 bytes = 16kB To provide).

Extending this, by fixing that the first packet of the beacon signal goes to the first packet of the lookup train, from the message indicator field for the number of iterations for the current 16 channel hopping sequence of the message header, the slave receives in the completed beacon signal. Infer the location of one beacon packet.

After reading this disclosure, other changes will be apparent to those skilled in the art. Such modifications may be used in addition to, or in place of, other features that are already known for the design, manufacture, and use of fixed and portable communication systems and systems and components included therein and those already described herein. May involve other features. As an example, instead of the above-described structure having four clocks and four data bytes in each broadcast packet, another arrangement may be used, i.e. with four clocks and four data bytes in every sixteenth packet. The arrangement of two clocks and six data bytes in 15 packets out of every 16 packets improves data transfer capacity without necessarily compromising synchronization performance.

The present invention is particularly used for services provided to users of electronic equipment, not limited to users of mobile communication devices such as portable telephones and suitably equipped PDAs (personal digital assistant terminals).

Claims (17)

At least one full device capable of wireless message transmission and at least one portable device capable of receiving the message transmission, wherein the full device comprises a plurality of predetermined data fields arranged according to a first communication protocol. Arranged to broadcast a series of inquiry messages each in the form, wherein the full device is further arranged to add an additional data field to each inquiry message prior to transmission, and wherein the at least one portable device receives the transmitted inquiry message. And to read data from the additional data field. The communication system of claim 1, wherein the pull device is arranged to add the additional data field to the end of each inquiry message. The communication system according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the full device is arranged to include an indication indicative of the presence of the additional data field in one of the predetermined data fields. 4. A communication system as claimed in any preceding claim, wherein the first communication protocol comprises Bluetooth messaging. 5. The device of claim 4, wherein the full device is configured to broadcast a series of inquiry messages on a predetermined clocked continuous frequency, wherein clock information for the full device is included in data carried by the additional data field. Communication system. 6. A communication system as claimed in any preceding claim, wherein the additional data field carries at least 64 bits of data. The device of claim 1, wherein the pull device is arranged to include first comparison data in a message, the portable device having a match between the storage means for holding second comparison data and the first and second comparison data. And a comparator means arranged to identify a time and provide data read from the additional data field and to provide no data if there is a mismatch. 8. The communication system of claim 7, further comprising means for generating the second comparison data from user profiling of the portable device user. 8. A communication system as claimed in claim 7, wherein the comparator means is a programmable device operable to perform a comparison between each set of first and second comparison data in a synchronous or overlapping manner. 10. A mobile communication device for use in the system of any one of claims 1 to 9, comprising: a receiver capable of receiving a short range wireless inquiry message comprising a plurality of data fields according to a first communication protocol; Means for determining when added to the plurality of data fields and means for reading data from the additional data field and providing the data to a user. A pull device for use in a communication system comprising a pull device and at least one portable device capable of receiving a message transmission and capable of wireless message transmission, wherein the pull device is a predetermined plurality arranged in accordance with a first communication protocol. Broadcast the series of inquiry messages each in the form of a data field of the device and add the additional data field to each inquiry message prior to transmission to cause the at least one portable device arranged to receive the sent inquiry message. Full device that allows reading data from additional data fields. 12. The pull device of claim 11, arranged to add the additional data field to the end of each inquiry message. 13. The full device of claim 11 or 12, arranged to include an indication indicative of the presence of the additional data field in one of the predetermined data fields. 12. The system of claim 11, wherein the first communication protocol comprises Bluetooth messaging configured to broadcast a series of inquiry messages on a predetermined clocked continuous frequency, wherein clock information for the beacon device is determined by the additional data field. A beacon device included in the data being transported. A method of enabling a user of a portable communication device to receive a broadcast message, wherein the at least one beacon device broadcasts a series of inquiry messages each in the form of a plurality of predetermined data fields arranged according to a first communication protocol. Wherein the beacon device adds an additional data field to carry broadcast message data in each inquiry message prior to transmission, wherein the portable device receives the sent inquiry message and reads broadcast data from the additional data field. Way. 16. The method of claim 15, wherein the beacon device adds the additional data field to the end of each inquiry message. 17. The method of claim 15 or 16, wherein the beacon device comprises an indication indicating the presence of the additional data field in one of the predetermined data fields.