A novel channel modeling technique for performance analysis of Bluetooth baseband packets

Short-range wireless links are susceptible to high bit error rate (BER) conditions due to physical layer impairments such as human body obstruction, multipath fading and clutter. The resulting network performance will depend on physical layer aspects such as the degree of forward error correction and packet size. This paper introduces a new novel discrete event simulation technique to model the performance of a Bluetooth piconet under variable loading and BER conditions. Critical points for proper packet types selection in Bluetooth were identified. The throughput and packet delay statistics were also simulated for a 2-slave Bluetooth piconet. Results show that, when the BER changes from 10^-6 to 10^-4, the one-way delay for 5-slot unprotected packet type increases dramatically, in this case from 53 ms to 373 ms for 90% of packets transmitted. However, the delay of 5-slot protected packet types remains constant for the same range of BER conditions (90% of packets with a delay of 77 ms or less).