Influence of bluetooth low energy on WIFI communications and vice versa

Abstract

In modern mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, multiple wireless communication standards are supported. Since many of those standards operate at the licence free 2.4GHz ISM band, these standards use different modulation schemes and error correcting techniques in order to avoid interference when communicating over a wireless link (WIFI, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy.). For commercial use, these techniques are sufficient, but for industrial or medical use, in perhaps life threatening circumstances, all communications should perform at peak efficiency whilst not influencing each other. In this paper, a case study is presented where a healthcare setting is envisioned in which a WIFI network is deployed and used formedical purposes.We investigate the influence of a lot of transceiving Bluetooth Low Energy devices on theWIFI throughput, and vice versa. Conclusions and suggestions about the coexistance of both standards are also given. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.