Inter and Intra Cluster Scheduling for Performance Analysis of Coexistence Heterogeneous Networks

In ubiquitous networking environments, we generally need two or more heterogeneous communication systems coexisting in a single place. Especially, wireless local area networks (WLANs) based on IEEE 802.11b specifications and wireless personal area networks (WPANs) based on IEEE 802.15.4 specifications need to coexist in the same Industrial, Science and Medial (ISM) band. If the WPAN communication coverage is expanded using a cluster-tree network topology, then the 802.15.4 network is more susceptible to interference from neighboring WLANs. In this paper, we propose an adaptive transmission power aware cluster scheduling algorithm using multiple channels in a WPAN in the presence of WLAN interference. The algorithm includes node identification, channel allocation, clustering and time scheduling. To evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, the performance metrics such as Bit error, Throughput, Average End-End Delay and Average Jitter is measured through Qualnet simulation. The measurement result shows that the proposed algorithm is effective in an IEEE 802.15.4 cluster-tree network in the presence of multiple IEEE 802.11 interferers.