On the coexistence of Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11 technologies in real networking environments

Both IEEE 802.11 wireless Ethernet and Bluetooth operate in the unlicensed 2.4 GHz Industrial Scientific and Medical (ISM) band. We explore the effects that devices using these communication technologies have on each other when used simultaneously for a wide range of typical networked applications. In contrast to many previous simulation studies on these technologies, our efforts focus on practical experiments using real, physical wireless and Bluetooth networks. Our empirical results clearly demonstrate the actual performance and difficulties users expect to encounter when IEEE 802.11 and Bluetooth technologies coexist.