Evaluating the Timeliness of Bluetooth ACL Connections for the Wireless Transmission of MIDI

This paper describes a preliminary work carried on to assess the use of Bluetooth technology to transport MIDI data streams. The proposed approach is based on Bluetooth ACL links. Although the music field motivated the work, the results are significant for the use of Bluetooth ACL links in time critical applications such as industrial automation. In the paper, a test-bed is described and several timing measures are presented and discussed. The conclusion is that the ACL links are suited for transmitting single note MIDI commands.