A characterization of the performance of Bluetooth 2.x + EDR technology in noisy environments

Abstract

Bluetooth (BT) is by far the most popular short-range technology for the development of wireless personal area networks and body area networks. Nowadays, BT 2.0 and 2.1 + EDR are the most extended and implemented versions of BT standard. This article presents an analytical model that computes the packet delay of transmissions that utilize this version of BT in noisy environments. The model, which takes into account the packet retransmissions caused by noise, is particularized to calculate the mean packet delay as a function of the signal-to-noise ratio for the different enhanced data rates provided by BT 2.0 and 2.1 specifications. Thus, the model permits evaluating the efficiency of using these enhanced rates in the presence of a certain noise level.