Bluetooth Performance Analysis in Wireless Personal Area Networks

In this work performance results of Bluetooth v2.0+ EDR are presented. Measurement of file transfer delay (FTD) is done with variable file size and variable distance between sender and receiver, in an indoor environment. In this scenario the presence of obstacles between nodes are almost inevitable, hence a comparison of FTD with and without a physical obstacle is presented. FTD is a very useful metric as it gives the overall performance evaluation. The knowledge of this metric is fundamental for the development of multimedia applications, as real time communication is an important constraint, so minimum delays should be guaranteed. The results show that the delay average in the transfer of files is a lineal function with file size and the distance between sender and receiver. The importance to study and analyze Bluetooth Technology is that it is already installed in hundreds of millions of devices, such as cell phones, PDA's, etc. Therefore BT is very attractive for ubiquitous computing with multimedia capabilities.