Enhancing Performance of the Bluetooth Wireless Channel Through Dynamic Segmentation

The emergence of Bluetooth as a default radio interface has allowed handheld electronic devices to be instantly interconnected as ad hoc networks. Recent studies show that since the Bluetooth standard operates in the unlicensed 2.45 GHz ISM (Industrial-Scientific-Medical) frequency band, the presence of multiple piconets in the vicinity creates interference on signal reception which, in turn, degrades the overall throughput of the network. This type of interference generated by Bluetooth piconets themselves is called intermittent interference, and it is a representative source of error in the Bluetooth channel. In order to cope up with this interference source, this paper proposes a sophisticated interference aware Bluetooth segmentation algorithm, where Bluetooth packet types are selected depending on the packet success probability, which is calculated based on the interference generated by multiple piconets. Such a segmentation algorithm is based on a precise analytical model, which is then compared with extensive simulation results. Among other things, we show that when the number of bridge nodes are larger than five the propagation delay between piconets increases rapidly. We have also observed a drastic overhead in the current Bluetooth piconet switching procedure and conclude that future enhancements to this procedure are crucial to efficiency of Bluetoothbased ad hoc networking.