Abstract
In general, conventional radio frequency (RF) pairing methods for computing devices that use, for example, Bluetooth technology may rely on in-band communications between the computing devices. The reliance on the in-band communications between the computing devices for pairing may result in a slow, probabilistic process that may be prone to failure. Such a process may lead to a poor user experience. For example, a user may use in-band communications between a remote control device for a smart television and the smart television when pairing the remote control device with the smart television during, for example, an out of box setup process. In some situations, an undirected scanning phase of the pairing process may be a primary source of this unreliability due to the pseudo-random advertising of both the remote control device and the smart television which may either probabilistically fail or take so long that the pairing mode of the remote control device times out.
The disclosed technology describes a process for out-of-band RF pairing between two computing devices that uses existing, standard infrared (IR) remote control protocols. For example, when a remote control device enters into pairing mode, the Bluetooth address of the remote control device may be encoded and transmitted in IR signals as a sequence of IR codes from the remote control device to the smart television. A receiving computing device, such as the smart television, may decode the IR signals to obtain the Bluetooth address of the remote control device. The smart television may then initiate a direct connection to and pairing process with the remote control device. The disclosed technology bypasses the slow and failure-prone undirected scanning phase of the pairing process, resulting in a faster, more reliable, and seamless pairing experience for the user when pairing the remote control device with the smart television.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Bailey, Guillaume and Delcroix, Gaëtan, "Out-of-Band Bluetooth Pairing Using Infrared Remote Control Protocols", Technical Disclosure Commons, (October 09, 2025)
https://www.tdcommons.org/dpubs_series/8699