Dual packet selection for improved Bluetooth performance

TCP performance over wireless links has been a research focus for quite a few years. TCP has been designed with very high quality transmission links in mind and increased packet loss is treated as a signal of congestion which triggers packet rate reduction. This in turn causes further throughput decrease. For wireless links considerable packet loss can occur due to bad and fluctuating link quality which is misinterpreted as congestion by the TCP. Different methods have been proposed with the aim to improve the congestion control mechanisms invoked by the TCP operation but their simplicity and applicability vary a lot. This paper concentrates on optimizing file transfer using Bluetooth [1]-[2] as an underlying technology. In Bluetooth a message is segmented into short packets, with different sizes and error-correcting abilities, which are transmitted over randomly selected frequency sub-bands in the ISM spectrum. The paper presents a detailed investigation on the possibility of utilizing dual packet selection scheme for optimal transmission depending on the channel quality and the length of the data. The supporting experimental setup for improving Bluetooth throughput performance is based on the link quality and requires only HCI layer user accessible commands. The results clearly show increase in throughput and reduction in the file transfer time. © 2011 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved