Empirical study of IEEE 802.15.4 mutual interference issues

IEEE 802.15.4 is an emerging standard developed for applications demanding low power, low data rates and functioning within a short range in the 2.4 GHz industrial scientific and medical band. It finds its application in residential, commercial and industrial, sensing, automation and control. With its ability to support a variety of applications, it is possible for there to be collocated and uncoordinated IEEE 802.15.4 networks. Since these devices are not coordinated, they may interfere with each other´s operational performance. The research presented in this paper examines the impact of collocated IEEE 802.15.4 devices on each other by observing the effect of the interfering device on the desired device in terms of packet error rate. Coexistence between these devices is said to be impaired if an overlap between the packets causes a desired packet to be received in error or to be lost. The packet error rate is an important measures of performance (MoP) which is computed based on the packet overlap factor. The relationship of packet error rate with signal to interference ratio and effect of frequency offset are presented.