Coexistence Issues of 2.4GHz Sensor Networks with Other RF Devices at Home

The IEEE 802.15.4 as one of the facto low layer communication standards for PANs and WSNs may be interfered by other wireless devices in the ISM frequency bands, especially at home, such as devices of IEEE 802.11b, Bluetooth, Cordless telephone, and microwave oven. This paper examines the mutual interference effects of 2.4 GHz devices which are widely deployed at home, via both theoretical analysis and real-life experiment. In the paper an analytical model is proposed to estimate the Packet Error Rate (PER), the collision probability and the active-rate of the interference networks. The model is verified through a series of experiments. The Experimental results also show that Bluetooth has little impact of interference on 802.15.4 networks, whereas microwave oven and 802.11b wireless networks can cause problems to 802.15.4; however the effects can be significantly reduced by a proper channel selection.