The Effect of Wireless Communication Interference on Wireless BCI
The result showed that a certain portion of signals was lost during the EEG data acquisition and processing as the degradation of Bluetooth affected EEG measurement, and suggested that when using a wireless BCI system, it is necessary to keep a distance from WiFi to avoid Bluetooth performance degradation.
Abstract
Wireless brain-computer interface (BCI) system is supposedly more desirable than wired one in real life. However, the performance of Bluetooth communication used in most wireless BCI systems can be degraded by interference from ambulant wireless environments, which would in turn affect the BCI system operation. We aimed to study the performance degradation of Bluetooth communication caused by WiFi interference that is widely used in real wireless communication environments. The experiment was conducted under two conditions: 1) varying distance between EEG sensor and Bluetooth receiver; and 2) varying distance between Bluetooth receiver and WiFi transmitter. The result of the experiment showed that a certain portion of signals was lost during the EEG data acquisition and processing as the degradation of Bluetooth affected EEG measurement. Our results suggested that when using a wireless BCI system, it is necessary to keep a distance from WiFi to avoid Bluetooth performance degradation.