A Distributed Time-Domain Approach to Mitigating the Impact of Periodic Interference

Low-powered wireless transmissions, such as those of a wireless sensor network WSN, are particularly susceptible to radio-frequency RF interference. When the interference exhibits regularities amounting to perceptible patterns, e.g.,i¾?regularly-spaced short-duration impulses that correlate among multiple network nodes, opportunities exist for nodes to avoid impulses and consequently mitigate their negative impact on the packet reception rate. Rather than adopt special hardware for classification and mitigation, which is often done with cognitive radios, our research explores techniques that can enhance the medium access control schemes of the traditional off-the-shelf RF modules typically found in low-cost WSN nodes. This paper describes a distributed time-domain approach for identifying the periodicity of impulses and scheduling transmissions around them. The approach is evaluated using a simulator in terms of packet reception rates and latency, and the results show that it can significantly reduce packet losses.