Title :
Coexistence Issues of Multiple Co-Located IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee Networks Running on Adjacent Radio Channels in Industrial Environments
Author :
Bello, Lucia Lo ; Toscano, Emanuele
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. Eng. & Telecommun., Univ. of Catania, Catania
fDate :
5/1/2009 12:00:00 AM
Abstract :
The characteristics of the IEEE 802.15.4 physical and medium access layers make such a protocol a suitable candidate to support communication between sensors and actuators in industrial environments. As industrial networks may comprise a large number of sensors and actuators and the delay increases with the increased number of nodes, a possible solution to keep the delay small is the use of multiple radio channels to implement different small low-latency communication cells. Although in IEEE 802.15.4 the radio channels do not overlap, recent literature showed that some interference may actually occur. This paper provides a better understanding of cross-channel interference in co-located IEEE 802.15.4 industrial networks and proposes a general methodology for the assessment of IEEE 802.15.4 performance under different cross-channel interference conditions. This methodology allows a network designer to perform on-site but accurate assessments and can be easily deployed in real industrial environments to perform measurements directly in the environment-under-test. A case study based on COTS IEEE 802.15.4 devices is presented to show how to apply our methodology to a real scenario and to discuss the results obtained with one or multiple interferers and varying some MAC level parameters.
Keywords :
access protocols; adjacent channel interference; wireless channels; IEEE 802.15.4; MAC level parameters; ZigBee networks; cross-channel interference; medium access layers; physical access layers; radio channels; Coexistence; IEEE 802.15.4; interchannel interference; wireless industrial communication;
Journal_Title :
Industrial Informatics, IEEE Transactions on
DOI :
10.1109/TII.2009.2018541