Autonomous allocation of wireless body-sensor networks to frequency channels: modeling with repeated “balls-in-bins” experiments

Abstract

In this paper we model a situation where several wireless body sensor networks (WBSN) compete for occupation of a number of frequency channels. Each channel can host at most one WBSN with satisfactory performance and WBSNs have the ability to change their operating channel, subject to the constraint that they can only monitor the performance or occupancy of their current channel but not of any other channel. We consider a number of randomized schemes for changing the frequency channels and present and evaluate Markov chain models for these, building on a "balls-in-bins" approach.