An implementation of a distributed scheme for managing the dynamic coexistence of Wireless Body Area Networks

We present a novel implementation of a distributed scheme for Dynamic Coexistence Management (DCM) of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) of inertial sensors. WBANs are comprised of sensors placed on or implanted inside a person´s body to collect physiological signals, activity or environmental data. Since WBANs are mobile systems by design, they can dynamically interfere with other WBANs when their users come within each other´s transmission ranges. This situation which is referred to as homogeneous coexistence may result in loss of data as well as increased power consumption and transmission latencies. In this paper we present an implementation of the DCM mechanism for WBANs of inertial sensors that are designed for real-time activity monitoring and gesture recognition. The proposed scheme is implemented and evaluated on sensors that use Nordic wireless transceivers for communication; however, it can be adapted to other types of lowpower wireless standards such as IEEE 802.15.4. Our results indicate that using DCM we can achieve a close to perfect performance with 15-20% more successfully received frames when WBANs are exposed to dynamic coexistence.