Impact of IEEE 802.11n Operation on IEEE 802.15.4 Operation

Wireless communication among sensor devices, enabled by IEEE 802.15.4 protocol, is increasingly replacing the existing wired technology in a wide range of monitoring and control applications. IEEE 802.15.4 networks typically operate in 2.4 GHz ISM band, which is used by popular IEEE 802.11 (WiFi) networks as well. An overlap between the channels used by IEEE802.15.4 and IEEE 802.11 networks may adversely impact the operation of IEEE 802.15.4 since it is a low power protocol using a small channel width compared to the transmitted power levels and channel width used by IEEE 802.11. Avoiding channel overlap between IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.11 networks will become difficult once proposed IEEE 802.11n technology becomes popular. This is because an IEEE802.11n network may use two 20 MHz wide channels for its operation, rather than a single 20 MHz channel as is the case with other IEEE 802.11 PHY layers. In this paper, we evaluate, via test bed experiments, the impact of IEEE 802.11n operation on IEEE 802.15.4 performance when there is an overlap between the channels used by IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.11n networks.