Performance Results and Analysis of ZigBee Networks in the Presence of Multifractal Noise

The need to replace wire harnesses within industrial sensing and control systems calls for a wireless approach using ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4) mesh networking, where nodes can self-heal and self-form. We proposed to use multifractal noise as a model for industrial electromagnetic noise in evaluating the performance of ZigBee mesh networks. This paper addresses an improved experimental setup, performance results, and analysis of the experimental findings. Packet error rate measurements were collected through a controlled hardware simulation of the transmission of packets from one ZigBee node to another. Performance of ZigBee network is measured in terms of Packet Error Rate (PER) versus Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR).