Bluetooth-based wireless personal area network for multimedia communications

This paper presents a Bluetooth-based wireless personal area network (WPAN) designed for multimedia communication among portable and distributed smart electronic devices within a short-range. The WPAN is a new standard under development, which will be part of the IEEE802.15 standard. The main objective of the WPAN is to replace wires between electronic and/or computing equipment in close proximity and provide connectivity to larger networks through a convenient transmission medium. The paper presents hardware and software codesign based on the Bluetooth protocol stack as a vehicle for real-life performance studies for multimedia communication over WPAN and beyond. Some results based on tests performed in the laboratory environment are also presented in the paper.