A performance study of packet scheduling algorithms for coordinating colocated Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11b in a Linux machine

Abstract

Due to the proliferation of hand-held short-range communication devices, coexistence between Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11b has become a performance critical issue. In this study, we performed an actual implementation of a Linux based network access point (NAP), in which Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11b are colocated. Such a NAP is expected to be crucial in supporting 'hot-spot' systems targeted to serve nomadic users carrying either a Bluetooth or a IEEE 802.11b device. Specifically, the goal of our study is to investigate the efficacy of a software based interference coordination approach. We consider five most commonly used scheduling algorithms in a Linux environment. Our extensive experimental results obtained in a real environment indicate that a hierarchical scheduling approach exhibits the best performance in terms of aggregate bandwidth achieved by Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11b.