ZigBee networks performance under WLAN 802.11b/g interference

ZigBee is a standard protocol suite for low rate wireless personal area networks (LR-WPANs) and has been widely utilized in various fields. Since both ZigBee and WLAN (802.11 b/g) operate in the 2.4 GHz unlicensed industrial scientific medical (ISM) frequency band, mutual interference is likely to exist and cause signal degradation. In this paper, an interference analysis model is suggested to obtain an estimate of packet error rate (PER) of a ZigBee network. A ZigBee evaluation kit, AVR RZ200, was implemented for measurement of packet loss ratio (PLR). The measured PLR matches the estimated PER, with varied distances and different center frequency offsets of different channels.