eNAV - Enhanced Co-Existence of IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.11

In the future, the Internet of Things will become increasingly important in a Smart City, for example. Today, however, established radio standards in license-free bands show that radios in heterogeneous networks interfere with each other. This includes radio standards in particular in the license-free 2.4 GHz ISM band. In this publication, we investigate IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.11 and show how radios in heterogeneous networks coordinate their actions in order to share radio resources. With the Extended Network Allocation mechanism, we demonstrate that IEEE 802.15.4 frame losses are reduced by a maximum of 50 percent even if strong interference occurs. We also show the design and implementation of an Extended Network Allocation enabled Gateway for the Internet of Things and provide a detailed description. For evaluation, we conduct measurements in a real-world application and environment.