Performance of WSNs under the Effect of Collisions and Interference

This paper proposes a methodology for calculating the energy consumed by a Wireless Sensor Network as well as its throughput under the effect of a jamming node modelling interference to account for collisions and retransmissions. Accordingly, the proposed methodology takes into consideration retransmissions and data dropped due to interference and collisions simultaneously. Simulations are conducted using OPNET to model various scenarios utilizing off-the-shelf wireless communication standards, namely ZigBee, Wi-Fi and Low Power Wi-Fi. A figure of merit is developed to offer more representative results for applications with different requirements. In achieving different requirements for a given application, there is a clear trade-off between energy consumption and throughput.