Video over Wireless Zigbee Networks: Multi-Channel Multi-Radio Approach

The emerging IEEE 802.15.4 (Zigbee) standard is designed for low data rate, low power consumption and low cost wireless personal area networks (WPANs). Video transmission over such networks is considered an issue since video traffic contains a large amount of information that requires high data rates. Wireless standards, including IEEE 802.15.4, in general use a single channel for data transmission even though multiple non-overlapped channels exist in the 2.4 GHz spectrum. The aggregate throughput of these networks can be improved by using multiple channels that are available in the radio spectrum allocated by the standards. The main focus of the paper is on the performance improvement of Zigbee networks under the interference of other 802.15.4 and 802.11 devices using multiple channels and multiple radio interfaces so that video transmission is feasible.