Experimental evaluation of interference mitigation on the 2.4 GHz ISM band using channel hopping

Both research and practice have revealed that sensor devices running the 802.15.4 on their MAC layer may be competing for wireless communication on the 2.4 GHz ISM band with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other proprietary devices. Building upon a SunSPOT development platform, we evaluate the impact of channel hopping on interference mitigation in the 2.4 GHz ISM band and propose a channel hopping model that may be used to mitigate interference under different indoor WSN deployment scenarios. The results obtained by using a wireless sensor network where the sensor nodes are placed at different distances from an interference source and using different power levels agree with previous experimental works on interference in the 2.4GHz band and reveal that (1) channel hopping can improve the performance of WSNs when deployed in Wi-Fi collocating environments and (2) among the different parameters, the received signal strength indication (RSSI) is the most relevant for WSN performance evaluation in collocating Wi-Fi environments.