Multi-Device Audio Sharing Using a Secure Code-Based Authentication Mechanism

Abstract

In the current wireless audio sharing landscape, it can be difficult to achieve real-time sharing of audio across multiple devices due to Bluetooth's core limitation of only allowing one active audio connection at a time for any given device. This study builds on previous browser-based research that allowed audio to be sent from with a laptop to a mobile device and improves on it through the development of a cross-platform mobile client application built with Flutter that connects to a Windows laptop host developed with Electron. This system allows audio to be streamed from a laptop through True Wireless Stereo (TWS) to multiple mobile devices, all connected to their TWS earbuds. The overall architecture incorporates secure mechanisms for authentication, to verify clients connecting to the system, and employs FFmpeg for real-time audio capture and encoding on the host.

WebSocket provides low-latency delivery and continuous streaming of audio to all connected clients. The Flutter mobile app displays, buffers, and plays the incoming audio with minimal latency while synchronizing across multiple devices. Experimental results show improved scalability, playback stability, and usability compared to existing Bluetooth methods. Overall, this study puts forward a thin client, secure, scalable solution for real-time multi-device streaming for collaborative listening, entertainment, or presentation across multiple device types.