JRed Support for the IrDA Protocols

Protocols implemented in whole or in part by JRed have dark gray backgrounds. The IrDA protocols are copyrighted property of the Infrared Data Association.

IR Transfer Picture (IrTRAN-P)

Object Exchange (IrOBEX) Local Area Networking (IrLAN) Serial Communications (IrCOMM)

Tiny Transport Protocol (TinyTP)

Link Management (IrLMP)

Link Access (IrLAP)

Physical Layer (IrPHY)

IR Transfer Picture (IrTRAN-P)

IrTRAN-P enables digital cameras to send photos to a PC or other receiving device via infrared. We have not implemented IrTRAN-P at this time.

Object Exchange (IrOBEX)

IrOBEX defines a request/response protocol between a client and a server. It supports MIME encodings and allows applications to exchange HTTP 1.0 headers. IrOBEX is the protocol PalmOS devices and IR-equipped cellphones use to exchange addresses and other data.

Local Area Networking (IrLAN)

IrLAN allows infrared devices to join local area networks. We have not implemented IrLAN yet; it really demands support for the Fast Infra-Red (4MBps) standard.

Serial Communications (IrCOMM)

IrCOMM permits serial communication over infrared devices. For instance, a laptop could communicate with an Internet Service Provider via an infrared-equipped cellular phone using IrCOMM.
As with some of the other IrDA standards, we'd love to see IrCOMM support in JRed. If you're interested in helping us implement it, please let us know.

Tiny Transport Protocol (TinyTP)

TinyTP is a flow-control protocol that helps application-level protocols like IrOBEX manage communication between clients and servers. JRed implements just enough of TinyTP to enable IrOBEX.

Link Management (IrLMP)

IrLMP manages connections and data exchange between IrDA devices JRed implements most of IrLMP.

Link Access (IrLAP)

IrLAP is the lowest layer of IrDA software. IrLAP establishes connections, formats data for transmission, and initiates or responds to device discovery events.

Physical Layer (IrPHY)

The physical layer is implemented by hardware vendors. The specification that guides these implementations, IrPHY, defines two types of infrared hardware implementation:

Slow Infrared (SIR): Asynchronous or synchronous serial transfer at speeds ranging between 9600 and 115,200 bits per second.
Fast Infrared (FIR): Synchronous transfer at speeds of up to 4 megabits per second.
JRed supports the asynchronous SIR standard, because it allows us to use the Java Communications API to treat the infrared port like a regular serial port. Compliance with the FIR standard requires special drivers for infrared hardware, which would most likely mean developing drivers in native code. We haven't ruled out support for FIR; we just haven't tried it yet.