SCO link sharing in Bluetooth voice access networks

In this paper we consider the potential for SCO link sharing in Bluetooth-based telephony base stations. A design referred to as the Bluetooth distributed voice access protocol (DVAP) is introduced. In DVAP, Bluetooth mobiles collect connectivity information which is provided to the base station infrastructure. Mobile node migration is then used to reduce blocking when a Bluetooth base station is carrying a full load of active SCO links. A simple heuristic referred to as dynamic base station selection is used for making the base station assignment. Simulation results are presented which show that DVAP has better voice call blocking performance than existing Bluetooth base station collaboration designs (in: IEEE Workshop on Wireless Local Networks, Tampa, Florida, November 2001). It is also shown that intelligent base station selection can support much higher levels of traffic loading at a given voice call blocking rate compared to an arbitrary base station assignment.