An adaptive ARQ timeout approach for audio streaming over Bluetooth

In this paper we study the application of audio streaming over Bluetooth and propose an enhancement to the Bluetooth link layer ARQ mechanism to compensate for channel degradation and to better support audio streaming. Specifically, our scheme adaptively sets the ARQ timeout value based on current channel conditions. We show through simulation and testbed experiments that the adaptive ARQ improves the streaming quality significantly compared to the 'vanilla' link layer of Bluetooth, especially in noisy environments. Our proposed approach is simple to implement and can actually be extended to the link layer of any wireless technologies.