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Bluetooth Noob here. We are currently developing a device which utilizes BLE for connectivity with mobile phones. However, we are experiencing a large amount of interference and broken connections in places were there are a lot of WiFi and Bluetooth devices, such as in shopping malls for example.

The issues include:

  1. Difficulties finding the BLE device during scanning
  2. Intermittently losing connectivity to the BLE device after the GATT connection was established.

We do not experience such issues in a controlled environment such as in a company office or a lab and connectivity is usually stable and fast to establish.

Given that classic bluetooth has 79 channels available instead of BLE's 40, does it mean that classic bluetooth is less vulnerable to interference from WiFi and other Bluetooth devices than BLE? Would it be more reliable in high interference environments?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ sounds lie this is a queue problem, along with retry-only-10-times. \$\endgroup\$ Oct 8, 2019 at 15:42
  • \$\begingroup\$ I have no experience with classic BT, but we run into exactly same problems with our BLE remote on NRF52832 chip. It is my understanding that BLE protocol is designed to slow down in busy environments or reduced signal strength. Unfortunately to the point of being practically unusable. \$\endgroup\$
    – Maple
    Oct 9, 2019 at 5:26
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Maple : Do you have any documentation or scientific paper references that mention this? \$\endgroup\$
    – Nullbeans
    Oct 9, 2019 at 7:43
  • \$\begingroup\$ As I said, it was just my understanding. Since BLE device hops the channels when encountering interference, and it attempts to re-transmit failed packets the latency increase is inevitable. Here are some papers from quick google search you might find useful: one , two \$\endgroup\$
    – Maple
    Oct 9, 2019 at 19:07

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