Heterogeneous QOS Provisioning For Coexisting Wireless Body Area Networks

Abstract

One of the successfully emerged proactive and non-invasive health monitoring systems newlineis the wireless body area network (WBAN). The medical-grade quality of newlineservice (QoS) requirements of the WBAN are given in IEEE 802.15.6 standard. The newlinewhole architecture of the WBAN communication can be classified into Intra-, Interand newlineBeyond- WBAN communication. The sensor nodes on a human body are responsible newlinefor measuring different physiological signals like blood glucose, temperature, newlineblood pressure, etc. The intra-WBAN communication is the transmission of these newlinemeasured signals from the sensor nodes to the coordinator node of a WBAN; which newlinein turn, forwards them to an access point (AP) in the inter-WBAN communication. newlineIn the beyond-WBAN communication, the APs transmit the medical data to the newlinehealthcare provider s database where the medical profile of the user is stored. newlineWhen two or more WBANs are in close proximity, the interference between the newlineWBANs cannot be ignored. The coexistence mechanisms described in the standard newlineviz. channel hopping, beacon shifting, and active super-frame interleaving, do not newlineguarantee the heterogeneous QoS requirements. So, the primary objective of this newlinethesis work is to develop schemes for the allocation of limited wireless resources newlineto guarantee the heterogeneous QoS requirements of coexisting WBANs. As each newlineWBAN is a human being equipped with sensor nodes and a coordinator node, the newlinerandom mobilities of humans change the inter-WBAN topology randomly. Thus, newlinealong with limited channel resources, the mobility, density, and the distributed nature newlineof the coexisting WBANs make resource allocation difficult. We have resorted to newlinegame theory, because of its ability to model individual independent decision-makers newlinewhose actions potentially affect all others.The most preferred coexisting mechanism specified in the standard for a dynamic newlineenvironment is channel hopping.