Experimental Study of Coexistence Issues Between IEEE 802.11b and IEEE 802.15.4 Wireless Networks

Coexistence issues between IEEE 802.11b wireless communication networks and IEEE 802.15.4 wireless sensor networks, operating over the 2.4-GHz industrial, scientific, and medical band, are assessed. In particular, meaningful experiments that are performed through a suitable testbed are presented. Such experiments involve both the physical layer, through measurements of channel power and the SIR, and the network/transport layer, by means of packet loss ratio estimations. Different configurations of the testbed are considered; major characteristics, such as the packet rate, the packet size, the SIR, and the network topology, are varied. The purpose of this paper is to gain helpful information and hints to efficiently face coexistence problems between such networks and optimize their setup in some real-life conditions. Details concerning the testbed, the measurement procedure, and the performed experiments are provided.