An Empirical Performance Study of Intra-vehicular Wireless Sensor Networks under WiFi and Bluetooth Interference

Intra-Vehicular Wireless Sensor Network (IVWSN) is a new automotive architecture that applies wireless technologies to the communications between Electrical Control Units (ECUs) and sensors. It can potentially help achieve better fuel economy, reduce wiring complexity, and support additional new applications. In the existing works, most of the popular wireless technologies applied on IVWSNs occupy the same 2.4 GHz ISM frequency bands as WiFi and Bluetooth do. It is therefore essential to evaluate the performance of IVWSNs under interference from WiFi and Bluetooth devices, especially when these devices are inside the vehicle. In this paper, we report the results of a comprehensive experimental study of IVWSNs based on ZigBee and Bluetooth Low Energy under WiFi and Bluetooth interference. The impact of the interference from Bluetooth and WiFi devices can be clearly observed from the experiments. The results of the experiments conducted suggest that Bluetooth Low Energy technology outperforms ZigBee technology in the context of IVWSNs when WiFi interference exists in the car.