Distributed dynamic scheduling for Body Area Networks

Body Area Networks (BANs), targeting everywhere anytime health monitoring, operate in license-exempt frequency bands. They require a cross layer design that jointly considers the requirements of (1) access delay to the medium and (2) packet delivery ratio (PDR). In this paper, we experimentally evaluate the PDR of a BAN under static and dynamic scheduling schemes. Investigations show that static multi-hop routing enhances PDR with the help of packet relaying, but at the cost of using more transmission slots in the shared medium, which may compromise access delay. To reduce this cost, we propose a dynamic scheduling approach that adapts to BAN topology changes resulting from body movements. Our extensive experimental results indicate that for BANs colloccated with other wireless systems, our dynamic multi-hop scheduling is mandatory for satisfaction of the PDR constraint.