The core of Symbian OS's infrared support is an implementation of the Infrared Data Association (IrDA) stack. This provides support for the ad-hoc networking required by infrared. Applications typically use device discovery to find other IR devices in range, service queries to find if the found device supports the required service, and use either a reliable or unreliable data protocol to transfer data.
Infrared support is integrated within the generic sockets and serial frameworks provided by the Comms Infrastructure sub-system.
Functionality is provided by a number of APIs. Use them as follows:
Allows applications to use infrared communications, as defined by the IrDA protocol stack, through Symbian OS's generic sockets interface.
Provides emulation of serial port communications over infrared. Its main use is to make infrared available to legacy applications designed to use serial ports.
Provides transfer of pictures between digital cameras and Symbian OS phones over infrared.