Interference Mitigation Schemes for Wireless Body Area Sensor Networks: A Comparative Survey

Abstract

A wireless body area sensor network (WBASN) consists of a coordinator and multiple sensors to monitor the biological signals and functions of the human body. This exciting area has motivated new research and standardization processes, especially in the area of WBASN performance and reliability. In scenarios of mobility or overlapped WBASNs, system performance will be significantly degraded because of unstable signal integrity. Hence, it is necessary to consider interference mitigation in the design. This survey presents a comparative review of interference mitigation schemes in WBASNs. Further, we show that current solutions are limited in reaching satisfactory performance, and thus, more advanced solutions should be developed in the future.

An Interference-Aware Traffic-Priority-Based Link Scheduling Algorithm for Interference Mitigation in Multiple Wireless Body Area Networks

“…Inter-WBAN interference has also been studied in terms of performance degradation and some interference mitigation schemes have been developed [14]. Currently, the IEEE 802.15.6 standard provides not only the PHY and MAC specifications but also the mechanisms for coexistence and interference between WBANs [2].…”

“…For WBANs capable of cognitive radio, the inter-WBAN interference problem should also be considered in the design because secondary nodes should sense the channels and switch the working channel appropriately in order to avoid interference [29]. Other existing works for inter-WBAN interference mitigation are summarized and discussed in more detail in reference [14]. …”

“…Many existing interference mitigation schemes for WBANs focus on either controlling the transmission power or scheduling the working channel [14]. The transmission power of transmitting nodes is controlled to mitigate interference, in which each power controller can adapt the transmission power according to the dynamic changes of network topology [15,16,17].…”

Smart Home Communication Technologies and Applications: Wireless Protocol Assessment for Home Area Network Resources

“…On the other hand, it has to be seen if HAN requirements comply with the home application necessities. From the set of analysed functional areas, the healthcare field seems to be the most demanding one, since the integration onto or into the human body of electronic devices for diagnostic, therapeutic, or surgical function have to comply with very restricted technical and biological requirements [84,85]. It is the only functional area that requires high portability medical devices that must be designed with a high-energy optimization concern in a way to maximize the lifetime of power supply (e.g., the battery).…”

Energy-Efficient Protocol of Link Scheduling in Cognitive Radio Body Area Networks for Medical and Healthcare Applications

“…For example, the emergency data packet from WBANs will be transmitted to the emergency server, while the monitoring data will be transmitted to the doctor. In a situation where multiple WBANs stay in the same place and transmit data to the gateway at the same time, interference may occur inevitably [5]. Therefore, the gateway needs to schedule the transmissions of WBANs with regard to the traffic priority before transmitting the data to different servers.…”