Piconet interference modeling and performance evaluation of Bluetooth MAC protocol

The emergence of Bluetooth as a default radio interface has allowed handheld electronic devices to be instantly interconnected as ad-hoc networks. These short range ad-hoc wireless networks, called piconets, operate in the unlicensed 2.45 GHz ISM (industrial-scientific-medical) band where up to eight devices may be used to configure single or overlapping piconets. As all piconets operating in the same frequency band, the presence of multiple piconets creates interference on signal reception. This paper employs a signal capture model to study the piconet MAC performance, taking inter-piconet interference into consideration. Furthermore, extensive simulation is performed to validate the throughput obtained from our model. These results indicate that Bluetooth throughput is sensibly affected by multiple piconet interference