Coexistence Issues of 2.4GHz Sensor Networks with other RF devices at Home

The IEEE 802.15.4 as one of the low layer communication standards for PANs and WSNs may be interfered by other wireless devices in the ISM frequency bands, especially at home, such as devices of IEEE 802.11b, Bluetooth, Cordless telephone, and microwave oven radiation. This paper examines the mutual interference effects of 2.4 GHz devices which are widely deployed at home, via both theoretical analysis and real-life experiment. In the paper an analytical model is proposed to estimate the Packet Error Rate (PER) of RF coexistent networks. The model is verified through a series of experiments. The Experimental results also show that Bluelooth has little impact of interference on 802.15.4 networks; the effect of microwave oven radiation on 802.15.4 devices is tolerable if the device is a few meters away from the oven: whereas 802.11b wireless networks can cause problems to 802.15.4, however the effects can be significantly reduced by a proper channel selection