An investigation of the coexistence of 802.11g WLAN and high data rate Bluetooth enabled consumer electronic devices in indoor home and office environments

The anticipated proliferation of various wireless local area network (WLAN) enabled devices in the near future is likely to result in increased mutual interference in the 2.45GHz Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band. This work investigates the impact of standard Bluetooth and enhanced Bluetooth interference on 802.11g enabled consumer electronic devices and vice versa. Technical designs for Bluetooth, enhanced Bluetooth and 802.11g systems implemented in software are first presented. Issues involved in modelling the interferer(s) within typical indoor home and office environments are discussed in detail. Packet Error Rate (PER) vs. Carrier to Noise Ratio (CNR) plots for different Carrier to Interference Ratios (CIR) are presented. Techniques used to improve the performance of 802.11g and HDR Bluetooth systems in the presence of interference are discussed in detail as a conclusion to this paper. Index Terms — WLAN, 802.11g, Bluetooth and interference.