Abstract

Only few years after Bluetooth technology emerged as a new wireless technology, it has grasped the focus of top manufacturers in the world and got widespread use. Indeed, it is an excellent solution to replace cumbersome cables, which used to carry information between devices. Like other wireless technologies, fading and time-varying channels greatly degrade the performance of Bluetooth communications. In the first part of this thesis, Bluetooth specifications are introduced. This is followed by channel estimation techniques applicable to Bluetooth systems. Bluetooth adopts slow frequency hopping modulation. Hence, it is possible to implement channel estimation at the hop beginning, and then compensate for the impairment during the later header and payload parts of data packets. Classical channel estimation techniques are discussed and compared in the Bluetooth case, such as LMS, LS, MMSE, and blind channel estimation algorithms. We derive the specific channel estimation equations for each channel estimation technique. In the last chapter, the simulation results of these channel estimation techniques are presented in various fading cases, i.e. slow and fast fading.