A game theoretical approach for interference mitigation in Body-to-Body Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a dynamic system composed of several Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) interacting with the surrounding environment, forming Body-to-Body Networks (BBNs). In this dynamic BBN system, we analyze the joint mutual and cross-technology interference problem due to the utilization of a limited number of channels by different transmission technologies (i.e., ZigBee and WiFi) sharing the same radio spectrum. To this end, we propose a game theoretical approach to address the problem of Interference Mitigation in BBNs. Our approach considers a two-stage channel allocation scheme: a BBN-stage for inter-WBANs' communications and a WBAN-stage for intra-WBAN communications. We demonstrate that the proposed BBN-stage and WBAN-stage games admit exact potential functions and develop best response algorithms that converge fast to Nash equilibrium points. Finally, numerical results show that the proposed approach is indeed efficient in optimizing the channel allocations in BBNs while using different transmission technologies. 2.4 GHz ISM band, Interference Mitigation, Channel Allocation, Game Theory, Nash Equilibrium. I. INTRODUCTION Body-to-Body Networks have recently emerged as promising solutions for the monitoring of people behavior and their interaction with the surrounding environment [1]. BBNs may represent a number of scenarios: (i) rescue teams in a disaster area, (ii) groups of soldiers on the battlefield, and (iii) patients in a healthcare center, whose Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) interact with each other. The BBN consists of several WBANs, which in turn are composed of sensor nodes that are usually placed in the clothes, on the body or under the skin [2]. These sensors collect information about the person and send it to the sink (i.e., a Mobile Terminal (MT) or a PDA), in order to be processed or relayed to other networks. Index TermsDue to the scarce wireless channel resources, many existing wireless technologies, like IEEE 802.11 (WiFi), IEEE 802.15.1 (Bluetooth) and IEEE 802.15.4 (ZigBee), are forced to share the same unlicensed 2.4 GHz Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band. Hence, mutual as well as cross-technology interference may occur between these technologies. Furthermore, since WiFi transmission power can be 10 to 100 times higher than that of ZigBee, ZigBee communication links can suffer significant performance degradation in terms of data reliability and throughput. In addition to the previously mentioned challenging issues, the mobility of WBANs in their surrounding environment and their interactions with each other make the interference mitigation in body-to-body networks a very interesting and mandatory problem to address. This is indeed the focus of the paper.Whilst a number of previous interference-aware studies have been based upon power considerations [3], [4], others have chosen alternative approaches [5], [6] to deal with this challenging problem in the design of WBANs. In [4] the authors propose a distributed power control algorithm represe...

A two-stage game theoretical approach for interference mitigation in Body-to-Body Networks

“…band. Hence, mutual as well as cross-technology interference may occur between these $ Very preliminary results of this work have been presented in [1]. Indeed, the interference issue is already handled by the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) standard [5], which defines three channels as advertising channels, used for device discovery and connection establishment, and have been assigned center frequencies that minimize overlapping with IEEE 802.11 channels 1, 6 and 11, which are commonly used in several countries.…”

Privacy preservation using game theory in e-health application

“…This section overviews some of the noteworthy works realized by various researchers. In [8], authors proposed a game theoretical approach with a two-stage channel allocation scheme: BBN-stage for inter-WBANs, and WBAN-stage for intra-WBAN communications to solve distributed interference mitigation problem in Bodyto-Body Networks. Their work is based on the bestresponse approach to compute the Nash Equilibria in a distributed fashion.…”

Moving Towards Body-to-Body Sensor Networks for Ubiquitous Applications: A Survey

“…In the same perspective, a game-theoretical approach called the socially-aware interference mitigation (SIM), has been proposed in our previous work to deal with this issue and considers the mutual interference as well as the cross-technology interference scenarios [98,99].…”