Multichannel protocol for interference avoidance in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are gaining importance over the last years. However, sensor networks are not the only wireless technologies, and thus suffer from interference from other co-located wireless technologies using the same frequency bands. In this paper, a new multichannel interference avoidance algorithm is proposed. This protocol avoids the tradeoff between throughput and reliability of communication that current multichannel protocols emply. It creates a network which has the single hop throughput of a single channel protocol and the reliability of multichannel interference avoidance. A new network protocol can very well work in theory, but doesn't necessarily work in practice. Therefore this protocol has been tested on a wireless sensor testbed. The testbed is an active testbed that has been built at iLab.t, the technology center of IBBT. Although this testbed is based on the MoteLab concept, it enhances the 'passive' nature of current testbeds with an active element, the environment emulator. This device can emulate events (e.g. battery depletion, energy harvesting, power sources, node failure, sensor events, actuator events, audio streams,...) in a real-life environment without the need for real sensor hardware or real sensor applications. Using this approach, novel wireless sensor network architectures and protocols,... can be evaluated in a true real-life environment and realistic user scenarios. In addition, the real-time power consumption of every node can be monitored, enabling the development of new, and verification of existing power optimized protocols, applications,...