Co-existence, Competition and Interference of Bluetooth and WLAN

Abstract

 Bluetooth is a technology, which uses a short-range radio link to exchange information, enabling wireless connectivity between mobile phones, mobile PCs and other peripherals. On the other hand, The Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) provides an alternative to the traditional LANs based on twisted pair, coaxial cable, and optical fiber. Bluetooth and WLAN cause interference with each other, increasingly as they approach each other. Bluetooth causes more
interference with WLAN than the other way around because of Bluetooth's faster hop rate (600 times faster). Co-existence is another problem that both Bluetooth & WLAN face. To allow coexistence, they must never use the same frequency at the same time. Bluetooth is designed for quick, short-range networks and features better power consumption, small protocol stack, robust data and voice transfer, which make it perfect for a WPAN (Wireless Personal Area Network) but limited in terms of WLAN (Wide Local Area Network). This paper presents an overview over the co-existence,competition and interference between Bluetooth & WLAN. For proper presentation of this, radio interfaces of both the technologies are discussed here also.