Investigating the impact of inter-user interference in wireless body sensor networks: An experimental approach

Author

Bin Cao ; Yu Ge ; Chee Wee Kim ; Gang Feng ; Hwee Pink Tan

Author_Institution

Nat. key Lab. of Sci. & Technol. on Commun., Univ. of Electron. Sci. & Technol. of China, Chengdu, China

fYear

2013

fDate

9-13 June 2013

Firstpage

1753

Lastpage

1757

Abstract

Inter-user interference degrades the reliability of data delivery in Wireless Body Sensor Networks (WBSNs) in dense deployments when multiple users wearing WBSNs are in close proximity to one another. The impact of such interference in realistic WBSN systems is significant but has not been well explored. To this end, we investigate and analyze the impact of inter-user interference in practical WBSN systems based on TelosB platform. We capture packet delivery ratio (PDR) and throughput considering unslotted carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (unslotted CSMA/CA) and slotted CSMA/CA modes in IEEE 802.15.4 MAC. Our experimental results show that the unslotted CSMA/CA is only effective in light inter-user interference scenarios. Comparably, the slotted CSMA/CA can provide dramatic performance improvement (2.7 times higher in PDR and 1.7 times higher in throughput on average), when severe inter-user interference occurs in WBSN deployment.

Keywords

Zigbee; body sensor networks; carrier sense multiple access; interference (signal); telecommunication congestion control; telecommunication network reliability; IEEE 802.15.4 MAC; PDR; TelosB platform; WBSN; collision avoidance; data delivery; inter-user interference; packet delivery ratio; reliability; unslotted CSMA/CA; unslotted carrier sense multiple access; wireless body sensor networks; IEEE 802.15 Standards; Indexes; Interference; Multiaccess communication; Throughput; Wireless communication; Wireless sensor networks; IEEE 802.15.4; experimental study; interference; medium access control; wireless body sensor network;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Communications (ICC), 2013 IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Budapest

ISSN

1550-3607

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICC.2013.6654772

Filename

6654772