Interference due to link management signalling in co-ordinated co-located Bluetooth networks

In the normal mode of operation of co-located Bluetooth piconets, nodes in different piconets transmit independently of each other, and thus inband co-channel interference is certain to occur from time to time. Co-ordinated co-located access points (CCAP) however offer significantly higher throughput than both the uncoordinated synchronous and asynchronous cases because an interference avoidance scheme is employed when in the Bluetooth CONNECTION state. However with a CCAP system, some interference is observed to occur when link management protocl signalling (LMP) takes place. The varying amount of interference generated due to link management signalling, the conditions under which it occurs, and how this may be avoided or minimised is examined in this paper. It is shown that under certain conditions, the CCAP scheme still outperforms normal Bluetooth systems even with the inclusion of LMP signalling.