Performance improvement of IEEE 802.15.4 in the presence of co-channel interference

In this paper, we consider performance improvement of IEEE 802.15.4 systems in the presence of co-channel interference from other systems such as wireless local area networks (WLAN). The proposed scheme first detects the presence of interference by means of spectrum sensing or transmission performance testing. When the presence of interference signal is detected, the coordinator changes the carrier frequency for the signal transmission by means of frequency hopping through multiple channels which are predetermined according to the characteristics of interference signal. After signal transmission through these multiple channels for a while, the coordinator selects the best one among the multiple channels and then returns to the original transmission mode through the newly selected channel, efficiently alleviating the interference problem. Finally, the performance of the proposed scheme is verified by computer simulation in the presence of multiple WLANs.