Adaptive channel utilisation in IEEE 802.15.4 wireless body sensor networks: Continuous hopping approach

IEEE 802.15.4 is arguably considered as a well designed standard protocol to address the need for low-rate, low-power and low-cost Wireless Body Sensor Networks (WBSNs). Within a WBSN, Node´s communication occurs during their confined active periods. The increase in number of active WBSNs would consequently result in the elevation of the overlapping ratio between the active periods of neighbouring WBSNs. In this paper, we address the interference caused by neighbouring WBSNs and its devastating consequences. Frequency hopping could be considered as a possible approach to alleviate the WBSNs performance degradation due to such interference. Our proposed “Continuous-Choice” scheme is compared with previously introduced “Initial-Choice” and “Blind-Choice” schemes in terms of channel utilisation, success rate, Satisfaction rate and energy consumption (both sensors and coordinator). Eventually, it is concluded that Continuous-Choice outperforms both Initial-Choice and Blind-Choice schemes in terms of above-mentioned performance measures.