A Survey on Spectrum Utilization in Wireless Sensor Networks

In recent years, the industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) bands have been intensively shared with unlicensed wireless communications applications such as wireless sensor networks (WSNs). With flourishing popularity of sensor devices and increasing installation of wireless sensor nodes, the cross technology interference (CTI) has become a considerable real-world problem. Because of CTI, wireless devices suffer significant communication dilemma. Moreover, ISM band, as the main communication medium of WSN, should be reasonably utilized in an efficient and effective manner. Extensive approaches have been proposed to explore spectrum utilization in WSN. However, there is no such one, which systematically organizes these works. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey on spectrum utilization in WSNs. To achieve this goal, We first illustrate the background of WSN and spectrum utilization. Our concern on CTI is then noted. Later we demonstrate the importance of efficient spectrum utilization. Eventually, through classification and summary of recent related works, we provide an essential structure of research in titled field and detailed intellectual merits of published works. Our survey covers more than 80 studies in the scope of spectrum utilization in WSN.