Performance evaluation of multiple IEEE 802.11b WLAN stations in the presence of Bluetooth radio interference

There are several papers published in the past few years about the evaluation of IEEE 802.11(b) WLAN performance degradation due to Bluetooth radio interference. The network topologies used WLAN in the previous literature are point-to-point, i.e., on AP and one WLAN station. In this paper we evaluate a performance of IEEE 802.11(b) systems composed of an AP and multiple WLAN stations using the same 2.4 GHz frequency band in the presence of Bluetooth radio systems within a BSS. Our results focus on the impact of Bluetooth interference on IEEE 802.11(b) WLAN systems. the throughput of IEEE 802.11(b) is estimated as a function of not only WLAN parameters but also Bluetooth radio system parameters. Further, we derived theoretical maximum throughputs of IEEE 802.1(b) systems with perfect channel conditions in order to compare with other scenarios that considering interferences and competition with other WLAN stations. As a result, with light and heavy BT usage scenarios, the IEEE 802.1(b) system throughputs are degraded by 25% and 66% respectively.