
Modeling Channel Conflict Probabilities between
IEEE 802.11b and IEEE 802.15.1 Networks
Ling-Jyh Chen and Ting-Kai Huang
Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica
Email: {cclljj,tkhuang}@iis.sinica.edu.tw
Abstract— With the increasingly deployed Wireless Lo-
cal/Personal Area Network (WLAN/WPAN) devices, channel
conflict has become very frequent and severe when one
WLAN/WPAN technology coexists with other WLAN/WPAN
technologies in the same interfering range. In this paper, we
study the coexistence issue between the most prevalent WLAN
and WPAN technologies, namely the IEEE 802.11b and IEEE
802.15.1 standards. We present analytical models on the non-
conflicting channel allocation probabilities, focusing on the co-
existence scenarios of one IEEE 802.15.1 network coexisting
with one or multiple IEEE 802.11b networks. The results show
that channel allocation conflicts does occur more frequently as
the number of IEEE 802.11b networks increases. Moreover, the
proposed analytical model in this letter is simple and applicable
to other wireless technologies, as long as the channel allocation
mechanisms are known.
I. INTRODUCTION
Wireless Local/Personal Area Network (WLAN/WPAN)
technologies have fueled the development as well as the
wide proliferation of wireless portable devices (e.g., laptops,
PDAs, smart phones, portable media players, etc.). Yet, the
popularity of these wireless devices has resulted in many forms
of frequency spectrum clash amongst the different wireless
technologies. To understand the performance of these wireless
devices in different interference situations, it is increasingly
important to study the coexistence issue amongst the existing
wireless technologies.
Since the two most widely deployed WLAN and WPAN
technologies (i.e., IEEE 802.11b and IEEE 802.15.1) both op-
erate in the same 2.4GHz ISM (Industrial-Scientific-Medical)
frequency band, channel allocation conflicts are inevitable
when they coexist within the same radio range. The coexis-
tence issues will become even severe while these technologies
also coexist with other 2.4GHz based wireless/radio technolo-
gies (e.g. IEEE 802.15.3 devices [1], IEEE 802.15.4 devices
[2], cordless phone, microwave oven, etc.). It soon becomes
important to understand the characteristics of each channel
allocation scheme and how each channel allocation scheme
interacts with the others. Table I summarizes some of the
relevant properties of the wireless standards mentioned above.
The coexistence issue between 2.4GHz-based wireless tech-
nologies has been extensively studied. [3] first performed
a systematical study on the coexistence of IEEE 802.11b
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Council
under grant number NSC 96-2623-7-001-004-D.
TABLE I
WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES IN 2.4GHZ ISM FREQUENCY BAND.
IEEE Standard 802.11b/g 802.15.1 802.15.3 802.15.4
Frequency Band 2.4GHz 2.4GHz 2.4GHz 2.4GHz
rcv Bandwidth 22MHz 1MHz 15MHz 2MHz
Number of Channels 11 79 5 16
Max Rate (Mbps) 11/54 0.72 55 0.25
Transmission Range 100m 10m 10m 20m
Applications WLAN WPAN HR-WPAN LR-WPAN
and Bluetooth devices via testbed measurements, and [4] has
studied the coexistence of Bluetooth and microwave ovens by
measuring the channel error rates of Bluetooth devices. In ad-
dition, analytical models for the coexistence of Bluetooth and
IEEE 802.11b have also been proposed in [5] [6] [7] at various
configuration scenarios, and the discussion on the coexistence
issue between IEEE 802.11 and the IEEE 802.15 based WPAN
technologies has been included in IEEE standards (e.g., the
IEEE 802.15.2 standard [9]). Nonetheless, previous analytical
work assumed operating channels are already conflicted when
modeling error rates between different wireless technologies,
while a detailed study on modeling the probabilities of channel
conflicts on a random view basis is still lacking.
In this paper, we study coexistence issues between two
of the most widely deployed WLAN and WPAN technolo-
gies, namely the IEEE 802.11b [10] and IEEE 802.15.1 [11]
standards. Unlike previous work [7] [5] [6] [3], which has
extensively studied the impact of wireless interference on the
packet error rate and/or data throughput based on an implicit
assumption that wireless channels are already conflicted, it
is the interest of this paper to study the “channel conflict
probability” when one wireless technology ‘meets’ the other
one in the same interfering range on a random view basis.
Of course, the results of our work could be combined with
previous work to relax that conflicted channels assumption and
derive the packet error rate and/or expected data throughput.
Finally, it should also be mentioned that the analysis presented
in this letter is also useful in calculating the channel collision
probability for other wireless technologies as long as their
channel allocation mechanisms are known.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section II,
we present an brief overview of the IEEE 802.11b and IEEE
802.15.1 technologies and their channel allocation schemes. In
Section III, we present analysis on the probability of channel
collision between different pairing of wireless technologies.