text: We focus on interference mitigation and energy conservation within a single wireless body area network (WBAN). We adopt two-hop communication scheme supported by the the IEEE 802.15.6 standard (2012). In this paper, we propose a dynamic channel allocation scheme, namely DCAIM to mitigate node-level interference amongst the coexisting regions of a WBAN. At the time, the sensors are in the radius communication of a relay, they form a relay region (RG) coordinated by that relay using time division multiple access (TDMA). In the proposed scheme, each RG creates a table consisting of interfering sensors which it broadcasts to its neighboring sensors. This broadcast allows each pair of RGs to create an interference set (IS). Thus, the members of IS are assigned orthogonal sub-channels whereas other sonsors that do not belong to IS can transmit using the same time slots. Experimental results show that our proposal mitigates node-level interference and improves node and WBAN energy savings. These results are then compared to the results of other schemes. As a result, our scheme outperforms in all cases. Node-level signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR) improved by 11dB whilst, the energy consumption decreased significantly. We further present a probabilistic method and analytically show the outage probability can be effectively reduced to the minimal.
  @cite_4: In this paper, a cooperative two-hop communication scheme, together with opportunistic relaying (OR), is applied within a mobile wireless body area network (WBAN). Its effectiveness in interference mitigation is investigated in a scenario where there are multiple closely-located networks. Due to a typical WBAN's nature, no coordination is used among different WBANs. A suitable time-division-multiple-access (TDMA) scheme is adopted as both an intra-network and also an internetwork access scheme. Extensive on-body and off-body channel gain measurements are employed to gauge performance, which are overlaid to simulate a realistic WBAN working environment. It is found that opportunistic relaying is able to improve the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) performance at an outage probability of 10 by an average of 5 dB, and it is also shown that it can reduce level crossing rate (LCR) significantly at low SINRs. Furthermore, this scheme is more efficient when on-body channels fade more rapidly.
  @cite_6: In this paper we consider an IEEE 802.15.4-based Wireless Body Area Network, where wearable sensor devices are distributed on a body and have to send the measured data to a coordinator. The Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance algorithm defined by the standard is used as Medium Access Control protocol, whereas different modulation schemes are assumed to be available at the physical layer. We propose a novel Link Adaptation (LA) strategy, where nodes select the modulation scheme according to the experienced channel quality and level of interference. The novelty lays in the fact that in case of large Signal-to-Noise Ratio and low Signal-to-Interference Ratio nodes increase the bit rate, instead of reducing it, as largely done in the works present in the literature. The reduction of the bit rate, in fact, allows to decrease the time the channel is occupied and, therefore, the collision probability. Performance is evaluated in terms of packet error rate and results achieved with and without LA are compared. Results show that the proposed strategy improves performance.
  @cite_11: A Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) consists of different tiny physiological wearable sensors to monitor the vital signs of a human body and these sensor nodes transmit in real-time the sensed physiological information to the on-body coordinator or server over a wireless medium. Any radio frequency based wireless device suffers from interference due to the existence of other wireless devices operating in the same frequency band. In this paper we address the problem of interference when multiple WBANs come in the proximity of one another. We propose a TDMA-based solution that creates a common schedule between these WBANs, so that there is seamless communication with their sensors without interference among them, while increasing the cost of latency per node. Also, when these TDMA based WBANs come in the close proximity of one another, they sense the existence of other interfering WBANs. Our solution proposed a scheme that defines the time when to exchange their TDMA schedules. We simulated the proposed solution using NS-3 network simulator and it is observed that there is improvement in the percentage of packet delivery by using the proposed scheme. It is also observed that the increase of speed of WBANs leads to decrease in the percentage of packet delivery.
summary: Other studies as in @cite_11 analyze performance parameters of a reference WBAN in the presence of another interfering network. Moreover, these parameters have been improved by adoption of an optimized time hopping code assignment strategy. Works in @cite_6 consider a WBAN where the coordinator periodically polls its sensors. The nodes however calculate SINR then select the modulation scheme according to the experienced channel quality. Authors of @cite_4 propose a single-relay cooperative scheme. Where a set of relays computes individually the required transmission power to participate in the cooperative communication. Eventually, the best relay is selected in a distributed fashion.