Developing a Reproducible Non-Line-of-Sight Experimental Setup for Testing Wireless Medical Device Coexistence Utilizing ZigBee

The integration of heterogeneous wireless technologies is believed to aid revolutionary healthcare delivery in hospitals and residential care. Wireless medical device coexistence is a growing concern given the ubiquity of wireless technology. In spite of this, a consensus standard that addresses risks associated with wireless heterogeneous networks has not been adopted. This paper serves as a starting point by recommending a practice for assessing the coexistence of a wireless medical device in a non-line-of-sight environment utilizing 802.15.4 in a practical, versatile, and reproducible test setup. This paper provides an extensive survey of other coexistence studies concerning 802.15.4 and 802.11 and reports on the authors´ coexistence testing inside and outside an anechoic chamber. Results are compared against a non-line-of-sight test setup. Findings relative to co-channel and adjacent channel interference were consistent with results reported in the literature.