Modeling the throughput of IEEE 802.15.4 based wireless networks under interference

The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is the basis of many protocol suites such as ZigBee, WirelessHART and MiWi popular in Internet of Things systems, wireless sensor networks, and industrial wireless networks. In practice, due to its working bands are free to access, IEEE 802.15.4 based networks often suffer from interference which will deteriorate the network performance. In this paper, we model the interference as an on-off process and propose a new analytical model for IEEE 802.15.4 based networks which quantitatively characterizes how such interference affects the network throughput. We also conduct extensive simulations which demonstrate the accuracy of the model.