Bluetooth is a low-cost and low-power short range wireless communication standard. Now a days nearly all the portable devices are equipped with Bluetooth functionality. Due to its wide spread usage and applications for short range wireless communication, this technology can be used for indoor position estimation. Currently, Bluetooth specifications provide two kinds of signal parameters which can be classified as connection-based and inquiry-based signal parameters. Connection-based signal parameters require an active Bluetooth connection between sender and receiver, while an inquiry-based signal parameters do not require an active connection. This paper investigates both kinds of signal parameters experimentally using different sets of Bluetooth USB dongles in order to select the suitable parameter for distance estimation. © 2012 IEEE.