Demo: unconventional WiFi-ZigBee communications without gateways

Abstract

Nowadays, the overcrowding of ISM bands is becoming an evident limitation for the performance and widespread usage of 802.11 and 802.15.4 technologies. In this demo, we prove that it is possible to opportunistically exploit the inter-technology interference between 802.11 and 802.15.4 to build an unconventional low-rate communication channel and signalling protocol, devised to improve the performance of each contending technology. Differently from previous solutions, inter-technology communications do not require the deployment of a gateway with two network interfaces, but can be activated (when needed) directly between two heterogeneous nodes, e.g. a WiFi node and a ZigBee node. This capability can be very useful for coordinating channel access between WiFi and ZigBee networks, reading measurements from ZigBee sensors, or configuring ZigBee actuators (e.g. an on/off power switch) directly by using common smartphones or laptops which are only equipped with WiFi interfaces.