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Experimental Comparison of Frequency Hopping Techniques for 802.15.4-based Sensor Networks

Authors:
Luca Stabellini
Mohammad Mohsen Parhizkar

Keywords: Frequency Hopping; Adaptive Frequency Hopping; Interference Mitigation; Coexistence in Unlicensed Bands; Wireless Sensor Networks;

Abstract:
Frequency hopping communication schemes represent an attractive alternative for interconnecting low power wireless sensor nodes operating in unlicensed bands. The use of multiple communication channels can in fact mitigate the negative effects of interference induced by collocated wireless networks and potentially results in improved reliability. With this respect, quite a few adaptive variations, aiming at improving the resilience of frequency hopping toward interference have been recently proposed. In this paper we present the experimental evaluation of three different hopping schemes: we implement a traditional hopping algorithm and two adaptive variations on TMote Sky sensor motes and quantify their energy performance under different channel conditions. We also compare the effectiveness of these three hopping techniques against the one of a communication scheme making use of a single channel. Our results, obtained considering a two-node topology, indicate that our previously proposed utility based adaptive frequency hopping approach is the most effective in avoiding interference and can significantly reduce the overall energy consumption despite its higher complexity. The performed experiments also show that even though reliable single-channel communication might be possible, by using frequency hopping sensors can limit the performance degradation induced by interference while avoiding the energy overhead introduced by the spectrum sensing algorithms that nodes have to use for identifying clear channels.

Pages: 110 to 116

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2010

Publication date: October 25, 2010

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4278

ISBN: 978-1-61208-100-7

Location: Florence, Italy

Dates: from October 25, 2010 to October 30, 2010