Time-domain cooperative coexistence of BLE and IEEE 802.15.4 networks

\u3cp\u3eWireless sensor networks have entered into our lives, and are expected to be even more widespread in the near future. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and IEEE 802.15.4 are two low-power wireless standards that are widely used in sensor network applications. They share the same unlicensed 2.4 GHz ISM spectrum. To be able to employ both technologies in the same environment in a heterogeneous network, the creation of a proper coexistence mechanism is imperative. In this paper, we propose and develop a cooperative mechanism for the coexistence of co-located IEEE 802.15.4 and BLE networks in the time domain. This mechanism tries to avoid overlap of communications in these networks in order to decrease the chance of Cross-Technology Interference (CTI) and thus packet drops. The proposed mechanism does not impose any protocol change. The performance of the proposed mechanism is evaluated by using real hardware devices. The experimental results show that the overall packet reception ratio improves up to 12%.\u3c/p\u3