Performance of multi user detector based receivers for UWB body area networks

Recent developments in ultra wideband (UWB) technology have opened a way to create wireless networks for personal health care monitoring. This personal area wireless network with a set of wireless nodes mounted on body is popularly known as body area network (BAN). A typical BAN has a set of thirty to fifty wireless sensors with a low transmit power constraint. Also, the wireless channel seen in by a wireless node is unique when mounted on the human body. It has been shown that UWB supports reliable connectivity at low transmit power for body mounted wireless nodes. Further, the UWB also supports co-existence with other wireless networks and supports higher data rate. Given that large number of nodes are placed in close proximity the BAN operates in a multi-user interference limited environment. Therefore, we discuss the performance of multi-user based detectors for body area networks and compare the performance with conventional receiver architectures. We use the recently proposed channel model for the standard IEEE 802.15.4a. Our simulations show superior performance of MUD based receivers over RAKE based receivers for a body area channel.