An Overview and Assessment of Wireless Technologies and Co- existence of ZigBee, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Devices

Abstract

Wi-Fi, ZigBee and Bluetooth wireless communication systems utilize the Industrial Scientific and Medical-(ISM) Band, which results in a high mutual interference between these technologies since they all these systems operate at the same or very close frequency bands. The interference problem increases with an in-device Co-existence (technologies existing on same device). This is primarily due to the characteristics of each technology such as access mechanism, frame structure, peak transmit power and frequency of operation. This work describes the interference between the Wi-Fi mostly as an aggressor on Bluetooth and ZigBee wireless networks. So the experimental analysis of the coexistence of these three technologies in an assumed home environment is studied especially when ZigBee is enabled for a Home Automation Network where there could be close proximity of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices such as PDAs and mobile phones. The obtained result shows that there is severe degradation on ZigBee and Bluetooth packet transmission of packets as well as re-transmission of ZigBee packets when Wi-Fi is operating.