Impact of Interfering Bluetooth Piconets on a Collocated -Persistent CSMA-Based WLAN

In this paper, the effect of co-channeled Bluetooth (BT) piconets on a carrier sense multiple access (CSMA)-based wireless local area network (WLAN) is investigated. Specifically, the p-persistent CSMA protocol is considered for WLAN and the probability of error of a WLAN packet is calculated in the presence of interfering BT packets of different lengths, variable piconet traffic loads, and as a function of the BT’s frequency hopping guard time. The probability derivation is then used in conjunction with the p-persistent CSMA throughput and delay formulations to examine its net performance in the presence of BT interference. Simulations have been used to corroborate the analytical results, which indicate that the presence of just one fully loaded interfering BT piconet reduces the peak CSMA throughput by 42%. Furthermore, we show that under fully loaded BT traffic conditions, the effect on the CSMA delay performance of more shorter BT packet transmissions can outweigh the interference impact of a higher number of BT piconets with longer packet transmissions.