Atheros AR3011 bluetooth disconnects, when wireless LAN is heavily loaded

Has anybody already had an issue with the Bluetooth Loudspeakers (Bose) that the sound is interrupted or stops sometimes.

After some testing I found out if I disable Wireless LAN the connection works fine.

If I load a website for example the sound gets interrupted.

If I do nothing besides listening to music via Bluetooth it works perfectly.

Additional information:

• Ubuntu = 14.04 LTS
• Main Board = Asus P8 Z68 V Pro
• Loudspeakers = Bose SoundLink Mobile Speakers
• Internal Bluetooth and WLAN Card

lsusb

Bus 002 Device 005: ID 0cf3:3005 Atheros Communications, Inc. AR3011 Bluetooth

Any suggestions or fixes?

This probably happens because of wireless and bluetooth interference. Wi-Fi and bluetooth share same radio frequency. With some bluetooth chips it is possible to turn on "btcoexist" parameter, which helps to avoid this problem.

Your wireless/bluetooth combo chip supports it. You can turn this option on by running

sudo modprobe ath9k btcoex_enable=1

To make this option permanent you can do this:

echo "options ath9k btcoex_enable=1" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/ath9k.conf

This solution should work for Atheros AR3011 and AR3012 combo chips. But USB chip names are not always shown correctly in lsusb.

But if wireless chip is handled by ath9k, there is a good chance that it will work.