Evaluation of IEEE 802.11b and Bluetooth coexistence in an office environment

IEEE 802.11b and Bluetooth (BT) have been comprehensively used as the core technologies of WLAN and WPAN respectively. However, since they both operate in the 2.4 GHz ISM frequency band, mutual interference between them can be significant. We evaluate the impact of BT interference on 802.11b systems in an office environment by a set of experiments. We include the experimental results that evaluate the narrowband interference problem in IEEE 802.11b networks; and we specify the attenuation requirement of interference suppression technologies utilised by the IEEE 802.11b system.