Mutual interference effects in closely-located HDR and LDR WPANs

Wireless personal area networks (WPANs) are short-range ad-hoc networks centered around a person that make use of unlicensed bands for data transmission. Several transmission schemes such as ultra wide band (UWB) or spread spectrum (SS) have been proposed for both Low Data Rate (LDR) and High Data Rate (HDR) WPANs. Such transmission schemes are designed to comply with the different requirements of LDR and HDR WPANs. These requirements are complementary in terms of data rate, but not in terms of coverage. It is thus an interesting topic to integrate LDR and HDR air interfaces in a dual-mode wireless device. However, because of the unlicensed nature of WPANs, interference issues exist between devices associated with different WPANs. These issues easily arise when a LDR air interface is closely located with a HDR air interface. This paper investigates the effects in terms of performance degradation related to the interference generated by closely-located HDR and LDR WPAN devices.