Link performance of an embedded Bluetooth personal area network

New communications technologies are emerging that are enabling new forms of short-range wireless personal area networks (PAN). A PAN is described as the connection of personal devices, allowing information exchange over short ranges. In this paper we describe an architecture and present performance results for a Bluetooth PAN embedded within a wireless local area network (WLAN) environment. While radio access interference in this type of environment is heightened, this type of architecture can bridge the PAN to the wide-area network, allowing information access and distribution across ad-hoc mobile environments. We investigate the link performance of Bluetooth in the presence of WLAN interference and present measured link performance results of such an embedded system.