Robust transmission of the IEEE 802.15.4 signal in the presence of co-channel interference

IEEE 802.15.4 networks operating in the 2.4 GHz ISM band are seriously affected by co-channel interference from coexisting radio systems such as IEEE 802.11x wireless local area networks. In this paper, we consider the beacon transmission in the presence of co-channel interference in the IEEE 802.15.4 beacon-enabled mode. For reliable transmission of the beacon frame, we propose repeated transmission of the beacon frame depending upon the channel characteristics. The network coordinator and its child nodes estimate the channel characteristics when they experience transmission failure of the beacon frame. The coordinator determines the number of repeated beacon transmissions and the timing gap between the beacon transmissions based on the estimated channel characteristics. Analytic and simulation results show that the proposed scheme can reliably transmit the beacon frame even in the presence of heavy co-channel interference, significantly reducing the network synchronization loss, power consumption as well as transmission delay.