US 8,798,541 B1 · System and method for socket backed host controller interface emulation for virtual bluetooth adapter

Abstract

A Bluetooth adapter is shared among guest operating systems of different virtual machines running on a common host computer system using a Bluetooth virtualization stack. The Bluetooth virtualization stack is exposed as a Bluetooth adapter to a guest operating system and as a Bluetooth application to a host operating system. The Bluetooth virtualization stack parses individual socket streams associated with an asynchronous connectionless link (ACL) originating from the guest operating system and couples the socket streams to an application interface associated within the host operating system. Plural instances of the guest operating system and corresponding Bluetooth virtualization stack collectively present a set of socket connections to the host operating system. A Bluetooth driver within the host operating system multiplexes the set of socket streams, advantageously sharing the Bluetooth adapter among different instances of the guest operating system.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A system comprising:

a plurality of guest virtual machines (VMs) executing on a physical computer system having a wireless communication adapter configured therein, each VM implementing a first wireless driver configured to transmit and receive data packets encapsulated in a first format to and from a corresponding wireless virtualization stack;
virtualization software running on the physical computer system that includes the wireless virtualization stacks, each of which corresponds to one of the VMs;
and
a second wireless device driver running within a host operating system executing on the physical computer system that is interfaced between each of the wireless virtualization stacks and the wireless communication adapter and is configured to transmit and receive data packets encapsulated in a second format to and from the wireless communication stacks.

1 more element

A method for sharing a wireless communication adapter between virtual machines running on a common host platform, each of the virtual machines implementing a wireless protocol stack configured to establish data links, the method comprising:

in a first virtual machine, encapsulating a first wireless communication packet into a first data packet as payload data of the first data packet, wherein the first wireless communication packet is in a first format and the first data packet is in a second format;
in a second virtual machine, encapsulating a second wireless communication packet into a second data packet as payload data of the second data packet, wherein the second wireless communication packet is in the first format and the second data packet is in the second format;
receiving the first data packet from the first virtual machine and unbundling the payload data from the received first data packet;
receiving the second data packet from the second virtual machine and unbundling the payload data from the received second data packet;
and
transmitting the payload data unbundled from the received first and second data packets to the wireless communication adapter.

3 more elements

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium comprising instructions for causing a computer system to carry out a method for sharing a wireless communication adapter between virtual machines running on a common host platform, the method comprising:

in a first virtual machine, encapsulating a first wireless communication packet into a first data packet as payload data of the first data packet, wherein the first wireless communication packet is in a first format and the first data packet is in a second format;
in a second virtual machine, encapsulating a second wireless communication packet into a second data packet as payload data of the second data packet, wherein the second wireless communication packet is in the first format and the second data packet is in the second format;
receiving the first data packet from the first virtual machine and unbundling the payload data from the received first data packet;
receiving the second data packet from the second virtual machine and unbundling the payload data from the received second data packet;
and
transmitting the payload data unbundled from the received first and second data packets to the wireless communication adapter.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

System and method for socket backed host controller interface emulation for virtual bluetooth adapter

Life of this patent

System and method for socket backed host controller interface emulation for virtual bluetooth adapter

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20