Realistic Simulation And Experimental Validation Of Adjacent-Channel Interference In Planning Of Industrial Wireless Networks

Interference is among of the most critical issues in wireless communication, especially in industrial application fields. Even though interference is rather well understood today, there is a lack of validated simulation models integrated with common network simulators. We present an integrated simulation and planning toolkit that allows us to estimate adjacent channel interference among multiple wireless networks such as IEEE 802.11 WLANs. We performed an extensive set of lab experiments not only to validate the presented simulation model but also to come up with quick lookup tables to be used for industrial network planning. The developed simulation framework provides very accurate physical layer modeling that is of utmost importance for WiFi planning in automation facilities. Not limited to the IEEE 802.11 protocols, the proposed interference model can be easily adapted for coexistence planning of WLANs and the IEEE 802.15.4 based WPANs in the 2.9 GHz band.