A comparative study of video transfer over Bluetooth and 802.11 wireless MAC

In this paper, we consider the problem of supporting video transmission over Bluetooth public access (Blue PAC) networks. BluePAC networks are an example of what are broadly called wireless personal area networks (WPAN). We compare BluePAC networks with WPANs based on the IEEE 802.11 technology. We compare the two based on the following performance measures: link delay distribution and packet loss rate. We also see how the performance of a video connection in a BluePAC network can be enhanced by reserving bandwidth by means of a deficit round robin (DRR) polling algorithm in Bluetooth. To perform the above the above study, we have used network models provided by the network simulator (NS-2), extended to model Bluetooth by Bluehoc from IBM. The results show that Bluetooth performs significantly better than IEEE 802.11 MAC in terms of packet loss rates, while 802.11 is better in terms of the packet delay distribution.