TCP traffic in Bluetooth 1.2: performance and dimensioning of flow control

Recent updates of the Bluetooth specification to version 1.2 have introduced significant changes in the Bluetooth protocol stack, including optional flow control. When the Bluetooth piconet is used to carry TCP traffic, complex interactions between TCP congestion control mechanisms and Bluetooth data link layer controls will occur. In this paper, we analyze the performance of the piconet with TCP traffic, and show that satisfactory performance for TCP traffic may be obtained through proper dimensioning of the Bluetooth architecture parameters.