Philips Semiconductors

Making Bluetooth and WLAN play together is easier said than done—but it can be done by carefully analyzing the interference scenarios and devising solutions based on the scenarios. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that the two devices (WLAN and Bluetooth) must have a means of communicating with each other in order to design a complete, effective solution.

Since no mechanism for exchanging signal status information has been built into the two standards, the job of minimizing interference must be accomplished by other means. Although techniques have been developed that do not require communication between the two devices (such as Bluetooth's Adaptive Frequency Hopping), the most efficient and comprehensive solution for the most serious problems can be accomplished by silicon vendors. They can implement information exchange capabilities within the designs of the Bluetooth and WLAN chip sets.