Centralized Control for Dynamic Channel Allocation in IEEE 802.15.4 Based Wireless Sensor Networks

Coexistence problem is one of the most important issues in the IEEE 802.15.4 based Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), since the system operates on the highly populated 2.4 GHz ISM band. As a result, system performance of WSNs can be greatly impaired by the interference from over powering signal from other systems such as WLAN and Bluetooth. This paper proposes an approach based on centralized control for dynamic channel allocation. The proposed method offers multi-channel utilization with intelligent controlling mechanism in order to provide system performance enhancement in order to cope with variation of interfered environment. Based on centralized control, decision making process is performed by the network coordinator allowing such system flexibility. Simulation model has been developed and it is embedded with this proposed mechanism in order to test the system performance. To observe the system performance under the proposed method, variety of simulation scenarios are performed with the variation of two major factors affecting system performance including the size of the network topology and the scale of interference. Proposed method is evaluated and the simulation results are compared against tradition system as well as system with multi-channel utilization method with channel scheduling. The flexibility of the method proposed here allows the system to have better system performance under different test scenarios both in terms of average packet end-to-end delay and system throughput.