Study of Resource Utilization in IEEE 802.15.4 Wireless Body Sensor Network, Part I: The Need for Enhancement

The impact of shared frequency spectrum on performance of Radio Frequency (RF) technologies such as Wireless Body Sensor Networks (WBSNs), have recently brought a serious attention among computer scientists. In this study, the impact of channel scarcity on WBSN performance is investigated from various points of view, Spectrum utilization level, orphan scanning duration, packet loss and total energy consumption. We have proposed two schemes called Idealized scheme and Initial-Choice scheme to indicate the channel utilization in "Ideal" and "realistic" manners respectively. A comparison among abovementioned schemes and a simplified version of IEEE 802.15.4 standard is managed to evaluate the performance of them. Furthermore, to highlight the tangible need of extensive investigation on channel utilization concept is considered as another scope of this study. Eventually, it is revealed that the deployment of IEEE 802.15.4 standard protocol, could cause the WBSN\´s performance degradation as the number of WBSNs increases. This is due to sever impact of channel coexistence and WBSNs overlapping active periods while there is still gaps (free slots) available and the channel is not fully utilized.