WI-FI (IEEE802.

11) AND BLUETOOTH COEXISTENCE:

ISSUES AND SOLUTIONS
Lior Ophir’, Yigal Bitran2, Itay Sherman’

’ Senior Engineer, Broadband Technologies Development, Broadband Communications Group, Texas Instruments Inc., 8
Hasadnaot St., Herzlia 46766, Israel, Lior.ODhir@ti.com
’CTO, Broadband Communications Israel, Texas Instruments Inc., 8 Hasadnaot St., Herzlia 46166. Israel, bitranQti.com
’WLAN System Architecture and Product Definition Manager, Broadband Communications Israel, T e . w Instruments Inc., 8
Hasadnaot St.. Herzlia 46766, Israel, ishermanBti.com

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios are collocated in the same

Abstract - 1EEE802.I 1 Wireless local area networking also
device, interference issues become more severe, and need to
known as Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth Wireless personal area
be dealt with using special mechanisms.
networking have independently become the leading wireless
networking technologies. Both technologies are finding their Texas Instruments has introduced a l3TNLAN coexistence
way into a growing number of mobile devices such as solution that is being used in a variety of industry products.
cellphones, smartphones, PDAs, and laptops. Both Wi-Fi
In this paper we address the issue of Bluetooth and 802.1 1
and Bluetooth utilize the unlicensed 2.4 GHz ISM band,
WLAN coexistence. In section I1 we give an overview of
resulting in a potential for interference between the two. In
each technology, and in section Ill discuss the interference
mobile devices, where the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios aTe
problem focusing on the collocated c.ise. We then introduce,
collocated in the same device, interference issues become
in section IV, a coexistence solution for this case. In section
more severe. and need to be dealt with using special
V we analyse the performance of both technologies when
mechanisms.
utilizing the coexistence solution, and compare it to the
Texas Instruments has introduced a BTNLAN coexistence performance without coexistence and the baseline
solution that is being used in a variety of industry products. performance of each technology alone. This analysis is
In this paper we address the issue of Bluetooth and 802.1 1 based on actual lab tests. Some future trends and possible
WLAN coexistence. We discuss the interference problem enhancements are discussed in section VI, followed by a
and the coexistence solution for the case where both radios summary that is given in section VII.
are collocated in the same device. We further analyze the
performance of both technologies when utilizing the
11. OVERVIEW OF 802.11 WLAN AND BLUETOOTH
coexistence solution, and compare it to the performance
without coexistence. A. 802.11 WLAN
Keywords - Bluetooth, 802.11, WLAN, Coexistence The E E E 802.1 1 standard [I] is a specification for WLAN.
The Wi-Fi Alliance is a nonprofit trade organization that
acts as a certification organization for products that
I. INTRODUCTION interoperate with one another via the IEEE 802.11 standard.
1EEE802.11 Wireless local area networking (WLAN) also Products that achieve certification are deemed Wi-Fi
known as Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth (BT) Wireless personal area compliant.
networking W A N ) have independently become the Table 1:IEEE 802.11 Standards
leading wireless networking technologies. In the year 2003
over 50 million WLAN devices were sold worldwide, an
increase of over 150% compared to the previous year. Also
more than 50 million Bluetooth enabled devices were sold
worldwide in 2003, an increase of over 80% compared to
the previous year. As the footprint and power consumption
of both WLAN and Bluetooth devices is reducing, and with
the introduction of new enabling applications, both
technologies are finding their way into a growing number of
mobile devices such as cellphones, smartphones, PDAs, and
laptops. Both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies utilize the
unlicensed 2.4 GHz ISM band, resulting in a potential for As seen in Table I , 802.11blg systems transmit data in the
interference between the two. In mobile devices, where the unlicensed 2.4GHz ISM band. In this paper we concentrate

0-7803-8523-3/04/$20.00 0 2 0 0 4 IEEE.
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 Table 3: 802.1 I h Frequency Channel Plan

KoUbl"r,, ema&m\

Each Wi-Fi network maintains the same frequency usage

over time. Since the 2OdB bandwidth of an IEEE 802.11h
signal could easily he as great as 16MHz, using adjacent
channels in the same location would result in interference.
For this reason Wi-Fi networks that operate in proximity to
one another are typically operated on channels 1, 6 and 11 to
prevent interference. In such a scenario, three neighboring
networks would occupy approximately 3 x I6MHz =
48MHr of the available 83.5MHz in the ISM band. This is
depicted in Figure 2.

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Wi-Fi devices operate at distances up to 100 meters,
however, range varies as a function of actual transmit
power, receive sensitivity and environment (that results in
different multipath and fading scenarios), e.g. indoors versus
outdoors.
Table 3 taken from [ I ] gives the channel ceutre frequencies
allowed for the 802.1 Ih standard. In the US. 11 possible
channels may be used, numbered from 1 to 11.
Figure 2: Frequency Occupancy of Three Wi-Fi networks
The transmissions of each channel are distinguished by the
colour of each packet. The duration of each Wi-Fi packet
varies based on the amount of data in the packet and the
transmission rate. There is typically a shon
acknowledgement packet after each data packet on the
network.

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 B. Bluetoorhl.l
The Bluetooth 1.1 standard 121 is a specification for WPAN.
Although products based on the Bluetooth standard are often
capable of operating at greater distances. the targeted
operational area is the area around an individual. e.g. within
10 meters of the user. The specification classifies devices
into three power classes as given in Table 4 taken from 121.
Table 4: Power Classes
' Minimum output power at maximum power setting
' The lower power limit Pmin<-3OdBm i s suggested but i s not mandatory,
and may be chosen according to application needs.
-60 I the context of coexistence, Bluetoo1.h and 802.11 devices
-2 -1 5 -1 .o.j o 0.5 1 1.5
F ~ q i m c yWHs
Figure 3: Typical Bluetooth Signal Power Spectrum
The spectral mask of a Bluetooth signal is 1 MHz wide at
the 20dB points, as shown in Figure 3.
The Bluetooth standard is based on frequency hopping
spread spectrum (FHSS) technology. Although at any point
in time, the Bluetooth signal occupies only lMHz, the signal
changes centre frequency (or hops) deterministically at a
rate of 1600Hz. Bluetooth hops over 19 centre frequencies,
equally spaced between 2.402GHz and 2.480GHz, so over
time the Bluetooth signal actually occupies 79MHz.
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Figure 4: Bluetooth Frequency Occupancy Example
Figure 4 shows how Bluetooth hops in the 2.4GHz ISM
band. Each blue rectangle rep:resents a Bluetooth
transmission. Bluetooth is a slotted protocol, where each slot
is 62511s long. Notice that although a transmission can
occupy I , 3 or 5 slots, only transmissions that are one slot
long are shown in Figure 4.
111. THE COLLOCATED COEXISTENCE ISSUE
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth products both operate in the unlicensed
2.4GHz ISM hand which is 83.5MI-l~wide with a lower
limit of 2.400GHz and an upper limit of 2.4835GHz. Since
Bluetooth devices hop over 79 MHz of the ISM hand and
IEEE 802.1 I b devices require approximately I6MHz of
bandwidth to operate, it is not possible to have both Wi-Fi
and Bluetooth products in the same area without a chance of
interference. In this paper we use tht: term Coexistence for
techniques that reduce interference, and in turn enhance
performance, of both 802.1 l b and Bluetooth devices. Within
2 can he "collocated" or "non collocated". By collocated we
mean that the two radios reside in the same device, with
isolation that can he as low as IOdB between the two
antennae. In this paper we do not address the non-collocated
coexistence problem. We note however that this scenario is
typically less of a problem due to the significantly higher
attenuation between the transmit-rece ive antennae.
When incorporating both WL.4N and Bluetooth
technologies in the same device, coexistence between these
two technologies is a key for proper operation. The key
elements for operation are adjacent channel rejection (ACR)
and a coexistence protocol. Hertz we focus on the
coexistence protocol. To better understand the problem, the
following four cases can be distinguished
849
 WLAN very coarse, of WLAN and BT

\
--
WLAN
Bluetooth

RX

lnterferencc from WLAN to Severe interference

driven are
modified to
allow quick
switching for
low
switching
speed d n v e n in a non-
typical
Not
recommended.
fashion.

BT and fmm BT to WLAN. from BT to WLAN sharing of

WLAN received signal time
depends on distance from MAC Loyer MAC layer Effective and Recommended.
Accsas Point (AP). RT
Coordimrion signalling allows far1 Technology
received signal depends on between RT switching that developed and
distance fmm other BT device and U N is transparent to implemented on
and adaptive gain control
with a small User TI 802.11 and BT
Severe interference from Interference to remote number of solution
WLAN 10 B T devices. Alro y a y signals
cause signa1 distonlon enables
at the Power sharing of
Amplifier (PA). time

The requirements from a good coexistence protocol are that:

lV.A TDM BASED COEXISTENCE SCHEME
I.The combined devicc shall cnsure undisturbed BT high
priority traffic such as voice Texas Instruments has introduced a BluetoothNLAN
coexistence solution that is being used in a variety of
2. The combined dcvice shall maintain fairness between industry products. The solution is designed with TI'S
non-voice BT communication and WLAN communication TNETWllOOb WLAN processors as well as TI'S BRF6100
while optimising performance uf each technology. or BRF6150 single chip Bluetooth solutions. A system block
3. If Bluetooth does not have traffic, the 802. I 1 performance diagram is given in Figure 5.
should not be impacted.
4. If 802.1 I does not have traffic, BT performance should
YY
not he impacted
Four coexistence options have been investigated, and can he
divided into two categories: Non-collaborative solutions
including Adaptive Fragmentation and Adaptive Frequency
Hopping and Collaborative solutions including Layer 3 flow
control and MAC layer coordination. The characteristics,
effectiveness and recommendations regarding each solution
are given in Table 5:
Table 5 : Coexistence options overview

Marimally SCe"Ui0 is
effective when unlikely due io
B T intederer is lack of knowledge
near receiver at AP of BT
network to and appropriate tmsmissions.
minimize adaptive Solutio" not
collisions fragrnen1ation recommended
with BT done by remote Figure 5 : Coexistence block diagram
network transmitter (i.e.
AP) The WLAN device acts as the coexistence master in the
A&ptiW WLAN and Effective for BTI.1 does not system. Is has internal knowledge of the state of the WLAN
Frt?*"eEy BT avoid one external, non- include Am. device and it has knowledge on the state of the Bluetooth
Hopping (AFH) another in collocated BT1.2 includes device via a unique hardware coexistence interface. The
frequency interference AFH but does not
with sufficient solve h e iSS"e
WLAN device also has control over the Bluetooth device
ACR. witb legacy and can thereby disable transmission by Bluetooth. The
Insufficient by devices. collaborative mechanism is based on time division
iuelf for multiplexing (TDM) and allows for the sharing of time and
collocated
interference.
hence the medium between the Bluetooth link and the
802.1 I WLAN link, while keeping the receive paths of both
b y e r 3 Flow Both BT and Effective, but Requires mixing technologies always enabled.

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 BlutlUOlh
Bath
WUN
. ,T mS .. TB,mS ,
Figure 6: Algorithmic description of the coexistence
mechanism
The basic algorithmic description is shown in Figure 6. The
system toggles repeatedly between “WLAN period of
TwM milliseconds designated for WLAN traffic, and “BT
period of T,, milliseconds designated for BT uaffic. These
parameters are configurable, and can be tuned in order to
optimize operation of each technology, while maintaining
no impact on the user. Further in order to ensure fairness
between the two technologies, it is recommended to use
same duration periods for each technology, i.e. use Tw,,,N =
T,, If there is no Bluetooth traffic, then in order not to
impact the performance of WLAN, WLAN operation is
allowed during BT periods (designated in Figure 6 by
“both”). Similarly if there is no WLAN traffic, then in order
not to impact the performance of BT, BT operation is
allowed during WLAN periods. The basic algorithm
described above can he overridden in order to suppon high
priority BT events and traffic.
V. PERFORMANCE COMPARISONS
Due to the time varying environment as well as the
stochastic nature of the two wireless protocols discussed
here, the best way to analyze the performance of a combo
device incorporating both BT and WLAN is actual testing of
such a device in a real network. Figure 7 gives a block
diagam of the test environment. Table 6 further specifies
the test environment.
Figure 7: Test Environment
Table 6: Test Environment Specifications
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This environment was used to compare the performance of
Bluetooth and WLAN in three scenarios:
I . Baseline performance - Performance of each technology
by itself, when the other radio #:collocated as well as
remote) is turned off.
2.No Coexistence performance - Performance of each
technology when both radios are operational hut without
any coexistence enhancement.
3. Coexistence performance - Performance of each
technology when both radios a r , ~operational and the
coexistence enhancement as described above is turned on.
Table 7 gives performance results for the scenarios and
cases that were tested. A compariso,n of the results in the
three scenarios for the case of a single STA as well as three
STAs in the network (BSS) is depicted in Figure 8. This
shows the importance of a coexistence mechanism in order
to allow adequate operation of Bluetooth and WLAN in the
collocated case. It can be seen that without any coexistence
mechanism, although the BT technology is usually able to
operate at 80%-90% of its baseline pxformance, this comes
at the expense of very poor or no WLAN operation. In real
world scenarios this often results in termination of the
WLAN application as soon a BT cc’nnection is created. In
some cases simultaneous operation without coexistence
results in disconnection of the BT link. Altogether without
coexistence both BT and WLAN operation cannot be
guaranteed, and based on the changing environment and
scenario unpredicted results can be attained, hut in general
BT usually harms the WLAN operation more than the other
way around. When the coexistence scheme that was
described above is turned on - simultaneous BT operation as
well as WLAN operation are guaranteed. It can be seen that
in this case each technology operates at around 60% of its
baseline performance, allowing positive experience to the
user. In many cases, the actual data rate is not limited by the
wireless network but rather by other limiting factors (e.g.
broadband access pipe, host processor speed), so in practice
almost no degradation in performame will be experienced
by the user.
 Table 7: Performance results communicating with legacy BT1.l devices, millions of
which have already been sold worldwide.
In the WLAN arena, new products based on the 802. I l g are
gaining popularity, also in the mobile market. These
products can achieve data rates of up to 54Mhps. and
provide new challenges as well as new opportunities for a
coexistence mechanism. In this paper we addressed the
coexistence issue with WLAN 802.1 Ih based products.
Coexistence enhancements for 802.11g will he covered in a
subsequent paper, although many of the ideas and results
1I Performance with and without coexistence presented here continue to hold in the 802.1 Ig case.
Another trend that may impact BTIWLAN coexistence is
g 100 the growing interest in VoIP over WLAN. The rollout of
p 80
* 60 UslLelootn- new mobile devices as well as APs that support these
P”B 40
20
E WLAN functionalities as well as other new capabilities introduce
&? 0 ’
new requirements and challenges in the area of coexistence.

I Mode
Performance with and without coexistence
g 100
=
3 80
60 OBl~etootn
n 40 EW-Ah
B 20
I O
Mode
Figure 8: Performance results with (a) one STA in the
network (b) three STAs in the network
VI. FUTURE TRENDS AND ENHANCEMENTS
In this paper we addressed the Coexistence of Bluetooth and
802.11 WLAN technologies, focusing on BTI. 1 and
802.1 lh. The Bluetoothl.2 specification that was recently
ratified offers some enhancements, namely AFH and
enhanced SCO (eSCO), that when incorporated into a
coexistence mechanism may boost performance of a combo
device with collocated BT and WLAN. Still it is important
to note that these new mechanism cannot solve the
coexistence problem by themselves, and a coexistence
mechanism is still needed. Further it is important to
remember these new features will not he available when
VII. SUMMARY
We addressed in this paper the issue of coexistence of
Bluetooth and 802.1 I WLAN, focusing on the case where
both radios are collocated in the same device. We analysed
the interference between the two and described ways of
coexistence for guaranteed simultaneous operation of the
two technologies. We introduced a TDM-based coexistence
solution that was developed by Texas Instruments and is
used in a variety of products. We showed that without
coexistence enhancements, no simultaneous operation of
Bluetooth and WLAN can be guaranteed when the two
technologies are integrated into the same device. When
using the coexistence enhancement, simultaneous operation
was guaranteed, with minor impact to the user.
As both Bluetooth and 802.11 WLAN find their way into a
growing number of mobile devices such as cellphones,
smartphones, PDAs, and laptops, coexistence enhancements
are vital in order to ensure proper operation and a positive
user experience with these two wireless technologies.
AKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank Yaron Kaufman for his
Bluetooth related assistance, and Shmulik Elgavi for his
long hours in the lab.
REFERENCES
(11 ANSVIEEE Std. 802.11, “Pan 11: Wireless LAN
Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer
(PHY) Specifications”, 2003 Edition
[z] Bluetooth SIG, “Specification of the Bluetooth system,
Version 1.2”, November 2003
[3l M. B. Shoemake, ”Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.1 lh) and Bluetooth
Coexistence Issues and Solutions for the 2.4 GHz ISM
B a n d , Whitepaper, February 2001.

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