A Study Of ZigBee Protocol With Interference Avoidance On Space Application

Wireless sensor on board spacecraft has many benefits. ZigBee is a short range, low data rate and low power consumption wireless communication among 802 family. Due to all of these characteristics, ZigBee has became a suitable candidate for intra-spacecraft communication. ZigBee network onboard spacecraft could help to provide redundancy to the whole system, and help to reduce the mass.But one of the main problems is the coexistence of ZigBee and WiFi. Because of the low transmission power ZigBee is more vulnerable when interference happens. An Interference detection proposal is proposed in this paper and a new protocol is designed based on interference detection. Instead of ’backing-off with a random time, the device will detect and switch to a new channel temporary if possible. A Matlab/Simulink model has been build on physical layer. The result shows that ZigBee Protocol with Multi-channel Interference Avoidance could effectively improve the system performance under WiFi interference. The safe distance with MIA protocol is larger than the conventional protocol. The throughput of the system has been enhanced under interference after implementing MIA protocol.