Experimental study on the effects of external interference on slot scheduling based MAC protocols in wireless sensor networks

Authors

Ngo C.T., Oh H., and Pham M.T.

Source title

Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering

Publication year
2016
Abstract

An energy-aware timely and reliable data transmission is one of the most critical requirements in designing slot scheduling based MAC protocols for applications in industrial fields. A time slot size affects two conflicting goals, reducing energy consumption and increasing the reliability of data transmission, thereby requiring an optimized time slot size. A time slot size should be determined in the presence of the signal interference by Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other sensor nodes operating at the 2.4 GHz band. In this paper, we employ two different interference models that account for different types of interference sources to determine the optimal size of a time slot. The experimental study with a simple network testbed is conducted. In addition, the effectiveness of using the well-known Clear Channel Assessment mechanism in the radio chip is examined under the high interference environment.