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802.11 Bluetooth coexistence

An 802.11 device and Bluetooth can interfere with each other when the 802.11 device operates on the 2.4 GHz band. All Bluetooth devices operate at the 2.4 GHz band. This section documents the technical details regarding the causes of interferences and solutions implemented in drivers, the 802.11 stack, and possible future enhancements.

802.11 spectrum use

802.11 defines channels on the 2.4 GHz band, each 20 MHz wide. Then, 802.11n allows for 40 MHz wide channels where you have a primary and an adjacent extension channel.

Bluetooth spectrum use

Bluetooth defines 79 channels for communication on the 2.4 GHz band each channel being separated by 1 MHz. The frequency range used is between 2.402 GHz and 2.480 GHz. Bluetooth's transmitted signal is spread across this 2.4 GHz band and the specification allows for 1600 frequency hops per second, the advantage being that since information is spread across a wide band of frequencies signals transmitted by other systems using a portion of the same frequency spectrum may appear as noise to only some of the frequencies used by Bluetooth device using frequency hopping and similarly only a portion of a Bluetooth transmission may interfere with signals transmitted by other systems.

802.11 and BT spectrum map

Center of frequency / freq-range (MHZ) 802.11 Channel number BT Channel
2412 2402-2422 1 1-20
2417 2407-2427 2 5-25
2422 2412-2432 3 10-30
2427 2417-2437 4 15-35
2432 2422-2442 5 20-40
2437 2427-2447 6 25-45
2442 2432-2452 7 30-50
2447 2437-2457 8 35-55
2452 2442-2462 9 40-60
2457 2447-2467 10 45-65
2462 2452-2472 11 50-70
2467 2457-2477 12 55-75
2472 2462-2482 13 Not used
2484 2474-2492 14 Not used

Interference

Each 802.11 channel then equals to 20 Bluetooth channels. When communication is enabled on an Bluetooth device you will get interference when the Bluetooth device hops on to any of the 20 Bluetooth channels equivalent to your 802.11 channel. Even if a Bluetooth device hops at the max allowed frequency rate of 1600 frequency hops per second there are only 79 channels available so at this rate each channel will be used around 20 times in a second.

Coexistence techniques

To aid with 802.11 and Bluetooth interference issues several techniques have been implemented on Bluetooth device firmware and 802.11 devices. We elaborate on each of these techniques below.

Adaptive Frequency Hopping (AFH)

With this technique, required for Bluetooth devices following the 1.2 spec, Bluetooth devices will scan for fixed sources of interference and adapt its own frequency pattern to avoid those with interference. This works great in low noise environments in a noisy environment could end up disabling Bluetooth communication completely.

Channel skipping

When a Bluetooth device sits on the same system as an 802.11 device the 802.11 device can inform the Bluetooth device the 802.11 channel it is operating on and the Bluetooth device can preemptively disable communication on the respective Bluetooth channels. The advantage to this solution is the preemptive nature of preventing interference but you also end up limiting the Bluetooth's own spectrum.

Time Division Multiplexing

With this scheme an 802.11 device and Bluetooth device can take turns in using the spectrum for communication. The 802.11 device would use a WLAN_ACTIVE signal when it is active and a Bluetooth device can use a BT_PRIORITY to categorize the priority of its different own signals.

Typically signals between an 802.11 and Bluetooth device are triggered using GPIO lines.

2-wire Bluetooth Coexistence

Under the 2-wire Bluetooth Coexistence scheme two signals are supported:

  • WLAN_ACTIVE - signals when an 802.11 device is active, 802.11–>BT
  • BT_PRIORITY - categorizes the Bluetooth signal, BT–>802.11

3-wire Bluetooth Coexistence

The 3-wire Bluetooth Coexistence scheme extends 2-wire scheme with a new signal from the bluetooth device:

  • BT_STATE: signals the presence of a Bluetooth transmission.

Interoperability

Apart from AFS and channel skipping techniques Bluetooth coexistence is typically tested with bundled 802.11 and Bluetooth devices. This becomes more evident with 2-wire and 3-wire which relies on GPIO pins for signaling.

Driver Bluetooth coexistence

This section refers to Bluetooth coexistence support on existing 802.11 Linux drivers.

Ideas for development

Once the Frequency broker is implemented add a trigger on an 802.11 channel switch to the disable the respective Bluetooth channels. This would be a general cheap BT-coex scheme independent of device interoperability.

References

en/users/documentation/bluetooth-coexistence.txt · Last modified: 2015/01/26 09:49 (external edit)