Hybrid IEEE 802.15.6 Wireless Body Area Networks Interference Mitigation Model for High Mobility Interference Scenarios

Abstract

The field of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) has revolutionized tremendously in the recent past with its major application in Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). This has in the same dimension attracted immense interests from the researchers and technology providers. The operational modality of the WBANs is that a few sensor nodes are placed in or around the body and that they are meant to operate within a limited condition while providing high performance in terms of WBAN life time, high throughput, high data reliability, minimum or no delay and low power consumption. As most of the WBAN operates within the universal Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) Narrow Band (NB) wireless band (2.4 Ghz) frequency band, this has posed a challenge in respect to inter, intra and co-channel interference especially in dense areas and high mobility scenarios. As well the body posture changes dynamically due to these mobility effects. In this paper, we propose a hybrid WBAN interference mitigation model based on Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) Contention Window (CW) approach and User Priority (UP) queues. Using Omnet++ simulation, a comparison to the IEEE 802.15.6 based WBAN protocol is presented under the standing, walking sitting and Lying postural mobility scenarios. The results show that the proposed hybrid model outperforms IEEE 802.15.6 based CSMA/CA protocol in areas of network throughput, bandwidth efficiency and network delay in these mobility postures.